In H.G. Wells’s 1904 short story “The Country of the Blind”, an explorer in the remote Bolivian Andes discovers a long-isolated society of people who have become blind due to some congenital aberration, amplified by generations of inbreeding. The society has developed and been maintained with no concept of the sense of vision. He is taken in by the people and befriended by them. When he tries to explain to them the meaning of sight and the visual wonders of the world, they laugh at his delusions. All unanimously conclude that this wild-talking outsider is troubled at best, dangerous at worst. Falling in love with a local woman, his persistent efforts to explain vision to her gets him in trouble with the local elders, who conclude that he is suffering from a dangerous virus and should be forcibly blinded “for his own good.” Eventually getting wind of this plan, the explorer is forced to make a desperate escape through the mountains, nearly losing his life in the process.
This little parable is instructive on several levels, but for our purposes it serves as a sobering reminder of the power of groupthink and mass psychology in suppressing the individual. Those who parrot the party line, who genuflect before the altars of the officially-sanctioned idols, can expect to be rewarded with praise and crumbs from the table of the master. Those who question the idols—i.e., those who dispense “red pill” wisdom—can expect quite different treatment. And so it is with modern American society.
It has becoming increasingly clear that modern American culture will be characterized by political cowardice and paralysis and accelerating social decay for the foreseeable future. To fill the void of authority left by rotting social institutions and a near-vanished nuclear family, the government will become more and more authoritarian as it frantically strives to maintain public order. Increased surveillance, travel restrictions, exchange controls, and other forms of expanded state power will become accepted and routine.
Nothing can be done to arrest these trends. The decline is irreversible. At some point, if not already, America will be unable to offer its ambitious young men either a decent job or decent women. If a man cannot even have these basic, minimal requirements for his health and happiness, what does he really have? What conceivable reason, then, would he have to continue to grind out his life under a corrupt and degenerate system that denies his masculine identity, suppresses his ambitions, and relegates him to second-class status?
Exile, or some form of expatriate status, may become a rational alternative. We must have the courage to call things what they are, and to make decisions based on reality, rather than on what we wished the world to be. In this respect, the Europeans are well ahead of us Americans. To a far greater extent than us ignorant, arrogant, spoiled Americans, Europeans have lived through wars, revolutions, civil unrest, collapsing economies, famines, and pestilences. Historically, Europeans are far more inclined to pick up and move when necessary, to migrate when required: they have been doing it for centuries. To an American, exile—that is, leaving America for another country—is nearly unthinkable. But it may be time to think the unthinkable.
But how can one cope with exile? How does one handle the shock of leaving one’s country, and face the likelihood of a reduced living standard, the loss of reputation, and the feelings of isolation and loneliness? This is a question that I have turned over in my mind for a long time. I gained a fresh take on the issue from an unusual book that has recently been translated and published for the first time, after languishing, nearly forgotten, in undeserved obscurity for over five centuries.
Forgotten, that is, until now.
The Italian Renaissance humanist Francesco Filelfo (1389-1481) had personal experience with exile, having lived in an age when it was common for men to relocate when necessity called for it. He wrote his treatise On Exile as a consolatory exercise, to describe how a man could turn the experience of exile—with all its associated hardships—to his own advantage and even profit from it. Written in the form of a dialogue, it is packed with examples from history and philosophy to demonstrate how being forced to leave one’s country can even be a blessing in disguise. These are the main points I took away from his work:
1. Embrace the Renaissance concept of the “universal man.”
This is a whole new way of viewing the concept of manhood. You are not a citizen of a specific region or country. Reject narrow parochialism or nationalism. You need to see yourself as a citizen of the world, a universal man, whose happiness is not dependent on geographical location. The true “universal man” has attained wisdom by his study of virtue and philosophy.
2. Cream will rise to the top.
Wherever a wise man has decided to live, he will always live there either as “the first citizen or among the first”. You will find a way to earn a living and provide for yourself. Do not fear. The soul of the universal man is a “prime mover” in the sense that it moves itself, rather than being moved by outside forces. As such, his soul is indestructible and eternal.
3. Follow your heart.
You are happy to the extent that you know your inner self, follow your natural inclinations, and never depart from them. If you are forced to leave your country, know that it is not so much that you have rejected your country, but that your country has already abandoned you.
4. The soul of a great man will not submit to Fortune in such a way that he does anything base or low.
Rather, the power of Fortune, even if it brings bad things, should be seen as a training ground for the great man’s own virtue. No truly wise man has ever been harmed by exile.
5. Have a comprehensive philosophy of life that you can draw on to sustain you.
It doesn’t matter so much what it is, as long as it leads to virtue, you believe it, and it gives you the strength of a lion. If you don’t have one, get one. Fast.
6. Reject the treadmill-like pursuit of riches and fame.
It only leads to more unmanly craving, and leaves you unsatiated. For the study of virtue, examine Stoicism, Platonism, and Epicureanism.
For anyone who has wrestled with the thought of leaving America and the possible trauma it could bring, Filelfo’s book On Exile may be a comfort. He shows that the secret of coping lies within us: polishing our own souls, striving to be that “universal man”, and focusing on what we can control, not on what we cannot control. I am not saying that the time has come to hit the eject button. But we should all have options at our disposal. We should all have our escape plan. It is time to think the unthinkable.
Francesco Filelfo’s On Exile can be found on Amazon.
Read More: What Does It Feel Like To Be Betrayed By Your Own Country?
Exile…to where?
Venezuala?
Iraq?
Sweden?
Japan?
Brazil?
All of these nations have their OWN problems. Sure, I see nothing wrong with travel or emigration, but the embrace that as an end to itself seems somewhat pointless.
Unless the US becomes so completely corrupted that these other nations, and their own corruption, become a more rational choice. But that’s going to be a tough call. Might be easier to move to Wyomiing or Utah, and live with the gun nuts.
Agreed. The problem with expatriation is that you never can really tell what you’re getting yourself into unless you’re already there. You effect trade-offs when you move from place to place. With we Americans, the question is whether many of us would give up our creature comforts in exchange for a lower standard of living. Not saying that it can’t be done, but some things that we take for granted and enjoy when we have it (e.g., good health insurance), we miss when we don’t have them.
However, the Internet has allowed us access to more and more information where we can, we hope, make more rationally informed choices about our lives and where we want to go. It can also put us in touch with like-minded individuals like never before. This, as I see it, is more in tune with the concept of the “universal man.” You can know a little bit of everything, but if you can find the information you’re looking for, you often will find it.
Why no eastern european countries on you list?
My take: because it is only a matter of time before east euro turns to shit on a stick – just observing their women making love to their smart phones it is obvious to me that they are itching to go full blown all out Paris Hilton.
They are itching, but what we see in the USA will not be precisely duplicated. USA has gone full retard, EE will go half.
Mr. Roosh,
You’ve been all over. I’ve never seen any reports of yours from BENELUX, Germany, France, Italy, etc.
Any interest in those?
I lived in Poland for a while. It was ok. But kind of shabby / crazy. I was in a border area so that probably was the reason it was so corrupt and messed up.
I learned a bit of Polish, but not enough to be useful – at best a good foundation to expedite learning proficiency. But I’m perhaps also interested in the other side of the Baltic – Finland. I very much like recreation in nature more than city life. The idea of a modest cottage with a sauna in the woods with lakes for kayaking and cross-country skiing would be my dream. Granted the “logistics” getting to and from civilization and nightlife would be quite poor.
What do you think about the quality of life in Finland? Are they as bad as the Swedes? I’m not so concerned about the Jante’s law business. I generally prefer the good taste of modest displays of comfort and luxury common to “protestant” style cultures as opposed to more ostentatious displays of status and wealth elsewhere…
I’m a US American, but I can’t imagine raising children here among my fellow crazy yanks. When I went to college there, (a place you might find quite familiar – DC), almost everybody was on some kind of psychopharmaceutical. Ritalin, SSRIs (Prozac, etc.) Benzodiazepenes, anti-psychotics for Bipolar, and so on… Look at those crazy b!tches of Jezebel, they are all on psycho pills too http://jezebel.com/were-living-in-pill-nation-what-are-you-on-472152610.
I don’t think the Americans are crazy because they suffer from bad blood. There is some kind of manic fever here that is terribly unhealthy. It’s deeper than just feminism… I don’t know what it is, if it’s the rootlessness, the mobility – geographic and social, the frenzy of changes in the market place whether by technology or fashion, the rejection of tradition and family, the envy of our dramatic social and class differences. But if you look in the eyes and faces of so many of our fellow citizens, there is an unmistakable dissatisfaction, indeed terror from the emptiness.
Socialism failed. American style capitalism is failing. The shops (malls) here are full. But the hearts are broken.
My apologies for the rambling…
If you do a writing “bootcamp,” I might be interested. You’ve developed quite well.
Mr. Roosh, I really enjoy your thoughtful contributions. You are really more than a pick up artist. A love-tourist with a great degree of sensitivity. Perhaps future generations will praise you as a great prophet, a St. Augustine for the 21st century? I don’t know where your journey will take you, but I can’t help thinking that something is still missing from the certain melancholy I am perceiving in some of your field reports.
Take care of yourself. As much as we fans all value you, you don’t owe us anything.
The message is simple…become the master or get the fuck out.
After I got laid off from Encorpera, which festers with group think and conformity, I spent two months in Cambodia. It worked for me.
Cambodia’s a great country, man. Women are very humble there. It’s also a decent place. Happy Herb Pizza shops everywhere.
Khmer music videos are awesome. Cheap hotel room, Khmer music on local TV, street food, fill in the blanks…
Cambodians must be truly gracious people indeed. The weed has to help, my dad smoked weed all the time on ambush in Vietnam. More evidence marijuana use should be mandatory.
When my father was first mate on a river assault boat during the Vietnam war, he was a component of an outfit called MACVSOG. Look it up.
Anyway, they were active in Cambodia. One night he piloted the boat up the river into Cambodia with a few dozen ARVN soldiers and a CIA ops officer in addition to the usual crew. They arrived at a village near the border with Vietnam, secured it and then the CIA man gave the order to kill the village headman, his wife and his son (maybe eight years old) because the headman was a suspected communist. ARVN troops carried out the order without hesitation, shooting them in their backs as they laid on the floor of their hooch.
It boggles my mind that a white man can get laid in Cambodia, knowing the truth of what my father and other Americans did there. But I guess it pales in comparison to what Cambodians have done to each other…
Humans are programmed to have a short and selective memory. Otherwise the US wouldn’t be such a wasteland of sheep.
Leaving America is NOT hard. In fact, as soon as I stepped off the plane in India, having left America, I felt such a tremendous mental freedom and peace, that I had never felt before. It was like I was experience REAL FREEDOM, for the first time in my life, having just left the fascist police state of America.
There may be small difficulties living abroad, but it pales in comparison to living in America.
Life is America is like hell on earth. I’d rather live in some shithole village in the middle of the jungle in a 3rd world country than live in America. At least outside of America, PEOPLE ARE STILL ALLOWED TO BE HUMAN BEINGS. In America, unless you become a mindless, brainwashed robot, you cannot survive.
At the same time, most Americans are not psychologically strong enough to handle life outside of the mental institution called America.
So it’s really up to the individual. Some men will leave America and thrive. While others simply aren’t strong or intelligent enough to survive outside of America, and thus shouldn’t leave. But then again, you’ll never know if you don’t try.
Thanks for sharing your experiences. I agree with you. I would say that most guys following this site are already in some form of “internal exile” in the sense that they have begun to emotionally unplug and detach from their American cultural surroundings. It gratifies me to hear that men like you have had the courage to make the jump, and have made it work for you. I wonder what your opinion is of a model where someone would spend some time during the year abroad, and some time in the US. Sort of straddling both worlds. Any thoughts?
Well, after having lived abroad, it’s pretty hard to adjust to American culture. Americans are such shallow, ignorant, petty, stupid fucking people. After having lived abroad, it’s kind of hard to go back to that shit culture.
I really hope to God a nuclear war destroys America. It’s a fucking evil country.
“Americans are such shallow, ignorant, petty, stupid fucking people.” You took the words right out of my mouth.
Jesus Christ!!??!! Nuke? I hate lying sluts but I don’t want to set them on fire. Take it easy.
Back away from the twinkies John, your having another sugar episode.
Just relax and we will talk you down, OK?
Do you like dark meat? Or darker?
Bring lube, she’s a might DRY…
No need to look for the wet spot, just find the glowy bits! 😛
Ah, at least I entertain myself…. Sick MFer I am… 😀
That, IMO, is a more acceptable model for men who have some ties to the US that they’re not ready to break, like family. There’s also the fact of one’s US passport, which ties you to the US as long as you have it.
Really, if you can make the model of being in some other country for a certain time and then in the US for another part of the time workable, that would be something of the best of both worlds — provided that you can take the best of US culture and avoid the rest.
Having lived in Asia for a time many years ago, I found that there were certain things about the US that I missed and that I couldn’t get over there. But, that was also a different time here in the US, where things were a bit saner.
I’m American and I’ve lived 12 years in Europe from when I was 7. When I came back to the US I was not impressed. My parents don’t understand it, but I will not be a citizen of the US in 10 years or less, when my plans go into motion.
I reject this country.
I am doing that with my vietnamese wife. Haven’t been to SE Asia recently but probably within the year will have an extended there. Can stay with her family or at a friend’s house. Honestly though I need to brush up on my moped skills as it is demeaning for a man not to drive a motorcycle. As far as leaving behind American culture that is not a problem at all.
I agree with you 110% on the police state comparison. I am amazed at how few true freedoms there are anymore. I felt freer in Latin America than I ever have in the United States.
We have become a nation of security guards.
We’ve become a nation of inmates.
Every country has its problems, there is no such thing as Utopia. It comes down to what kind of crap you want to put up with. Sometimes it is better to tolerate the nonsense of another culture in exchange for not having to deal with the high-tech medieval, draconian wasteland that the United States seems to be heading towards.
What really constitutes exile is going to another culture, which is best defined as a country whose official language is not English. This however does not necessarily guarantee a better existence, but suffice it to say the english speaking anglopshere is pretty much toast. Then there are other cultures that want to be like us. Western Europe comes to my mind. Europe is like America’s bratty little brother; they criticize us (respectfully) but so desperately want to be like us.
When one exiles, it is about estimating how much time you have left on the planet, and how long it will take before a nation of your choosing will become (potentially) Americanized. The process of Americanization of other countries is not limited to a political direction, it is also technological. For example, Roosh has already written a few posts on the topic of the presences of smart phones and a shift in females attitudes in Poland.
There are of course also wild cards in the equation; like a civil war or some kind of correction to bring America off the path of self-destruction. But we can’t just expect that things will get better, or not at least in our lifetime. Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. And going to another country means rethinking everything that was important in your life. Exile is about riding out the shit storm somewhere where you your basic freedoms and rights intact. That, plus as was stated, access to decent females and a means to survive. I will say that it is easier said then done, there will always be doubts. As well one never really just says “goodbye” to America. Yes at times I do miss the States, but what I miss is the States of long ago, and what remains today is nothing more than an empty shell of what was once a great nation.
A good colleague of mine lives in SA, and he visits his family every 6 months, and he notices subtle differences each time he goes, reassuring him that, in the final analysis he made the right choice to leave. To exile is a personal decision, not an easy one, but not impossible either.
Thanks for pointing out some important factors.
How ironic that that article came up just as I am seriously starting plans to expatriate. I’ve done quite a lot of research and SE Asia – specificially Thailand – is where I’m leaving to as soon as my employment contract expires in a couple of years.
I recently had an epiphany, and many of the things I’ve been pondering about where life is leading me and where the country is going finally came together. It can be summed up in one statement: Leave. As soon as possible, leave.
The desire to leave has been building in me for a while. It actually started in my mid-20s when I started the long process of realization that everything I had been fed by the edumacation system and society was all a pack of lies. “Work hard, get a degree, and the world will be your oyster.” Well, it didn’t quite work out that way.
That is just one in a series of lies that it’s taken me 10 years to deprogram myself from. (Red pill, anyone?)
The next one was to pedestalize women – specifically Lily White Western women. I began to realize shortly after high school and after many failed relationships with them that American women really weren’t my cup of tea. And looking at the divorce rate in this country and knowing women are responsible for 75% (or more) of divorce initiations, I can see that it really wasn’t my fault. Men have become nothing more than disposable meal tickets to women, whether they realize it or not, that’s what their “hamster” is compelling them to do. I began to date outside my race, and found that other women respected me, wanted to be with me, and didn’t withhold sex as a bargaining chip like American women do. I now see American women as pathetic, dull, and sterile (I think Western birth rates will back me up on that last claim.)
The next one was the debt lie. People in this country are trained (brainwashed) to see debt as the road to prosperity. I had 2 new cars, new furniture, sterling credit, and I was miserable. Money came in, and money went out. I tried very hard to free myself from the burden of crushing debt, but I wasn’t fast enough. The business I’m in took a turn for the worse nationwide and the next thing I knew my job was on the chopping block. It was painful, but bankruptcy was the best thing that ever happened to me. I got another job and vowed never to voluntarily enslave myself with consumer debt again. If I can’t pay for it, I don’t need it.
I found that one question leads to another. And suffice it to say all I think about is leaving. I spent some time in Latin America (I lived there for 6 months). The lesson I got from living there was – yet another lie/cultural meme/whatever you want to call it, that we really don’t have it as good as we think we do in the U.S. The women were completely different (better) and I actually felt freer there than I ever have in the US.
I find that we are trading liberty for security at an ever-accelerating rate, a product of feminism, and as H.L. Mencken put it:
“The American of today, in fact, probably enjoys less personal liberty than any other man of Christendom, and even his political liberty is fast succumbing to the new dogma that certain theories of government are virtuous and lawful, and others abhorrent and felonious. Laws limiting the radius of his free activity multiply year by year: It is now practically impossible for him to exhibit anything describable as genuine individuality, either in action or in thought, without running afoul of some harsh and unintelligible penalty. Moreover, this gradual (and, of late, rapidly progressive) decay of freedom goes almost without challenge; the American has grown so accustomed to the denial of his constitutional rights and to the minute regulation of his conduct by swarms of spies, letter-openers, informers and agents provocateurs that he no longer makes any serious protest.”
That was written in the 1930s. Imagine what he would think about today’s oppressive government.
In any case, I totally support men who want to expatriate and try for something new. Leaving for new lands, new women, and new opportunities are the only things that give me hope anymore.
If Thailand doesn’t work out, try Cambodia next door. You can stay there forever, you can keep getting 6 month or one year visas and just keep renewing it. It has some of the best visa policies in the world. Thailand has become much more fascist, it’s pretty hard to get a long term visa there, I heard.
Thanks for the tip. I actually have a book by someone who went to SE Asia with his best friend, and his best friend decided to stay in Cambodia rather than coming back to Ireland. He seemed much happier there.
I heard the same. Thailand used to be the expat destination in SE Asia. Now its Cambodia and Laos. In 15 years it will be Myanmar. Places untouched by the Cathedral grow rarer.
I would try Malaysia, they have a better visa program and more people speak English. Penang is a nice town,or you could be down in Johor and go to Singapore when you wanted.
Thailand is too strange in some ways. A lot of dissipated white guys here, like the Dennis Hopper character in Apocalypse Now.
That said, Thailand is cheap, you can get work here, and there are plenty of cute women.
I’m trying to figure out where to emigrate to and the logistics required. I’m old enough that I don’t recover physically as quickly as younger folks and it’s just going to get worse. I’m looking for somewhere I can be comfortable, “the middle path” as Gautama Buddha described. I’m not going to be able to give up enough attachment to reach enlightenment and I don’t feel strongly enough about it to care.
I’m looking for a place where I will have refuge from physical extremes. A place where I will be somewhat accepted by the society around me (unlike the flamingly politically liberal city I currently live in). Someplace where I can contribute and be useful to those around me.
Suggestions?
If they ever start demonizing Asians like they do “straight white males”, I’m outta here. China has its problems, but the raw nationalism keeps liberal idiocy at bay.
The best thing for you guys should be to reproduce like hell and create a generation of like-minded thinkers.
Problem is lotta kids rebel against their parents culture an wanna be like the mainstream western culture
From QuintusCurtius.com, antique Ferarri:
http://quintuscurtius.com/image/45422723676
Ferrari.
“Going Galt,” as it were.
Is there an ebook copy of On Exile floating around? It seems only the paperback is available.
As far as I know, the only current edition available is through the I Tatti Renaissance Library, which can be found here:
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674066366
This version only appeared last month, and the translator claims to be the first person to present De Exilio (On Exile) in any modern language. The I Tatti series is the Renaissance version of the Loeb Classical Library. They offer the best of the Renaissance works in Latin, with translation and commentary. You have the original Latin text on one page and the English translation on the other. But the other good thing is that you get great introductions and scholarly comments throughout as well.
As far as I know, the only edition currently available is that offered through the I Tatti Renaissance Library. Which is a kick-ass edition. Original Latin text, facing page English translation, with full introduction and scholarly notes. This series offers all the great texts of the Renaissance, and aims to do for it what the Loeb series did for classic Greek and Latin texts. The translator states that De Exilio has not seen the light of day since the 1450s.
The fact that we talk about normality shows how abnormal is the period in which we live. And this happens all over the world, not just America, every country has its problems, including mine.
There is a scene in the movie Caligula in which the young king addressed to the crowd bleating. Because people do not react, Caligula insists with a new bleating. At that
moment, he heard a timid response, then another. Soon, everyone is bleating, to the astonishment of Caligula, who turns around to Praetorian Guard and says: “These people are crazy. Bleat like animals”.
It’s a sick world in which we live in, a world that seeks abnormality, sensationalism
and leaving the ordinary behind, so normality would be trying to survive and succeed, daily testing for adaptation,integration, understanding of the world and communicate with it. Nothing else.
I didn’t read The Country of the Blind but I’m wonder: if that was a peaceful and happy society, why he tried to destroy their safety, their inner balance and replace with anguish and fear of the unknown? … intresting story.
He didn’t believe he was hurting them. He was trying to share with them the experience of vision. And they returned his kindness with trying to destroy his vision.
He was not wise, he acted recklessly, without thinking about how the others will receive his words. The first need of man is to know the factors that determine his existence, to have a secure knowledge, to control the antidote of fear , a fear generated by ignorance. When man’s psychological certainties are in danger of being shake, his aggression towards those who try to shake them becomes animal, it’s instinctual.
I’ll add my 2¢ on something I disagree with in the article.
I don’t believe expatriating necessarily means losing “reputation” as the article puts it. Quite the contrary, from my experience. When you expatriate you automatically gain some “exotic capital” as you will be a minority in most countries, and many foreign women desire Western men.
Also, I don’t agree with the loss in the standard of living. You may earn less, but living expenses are drastically reduced in most cases when you expatriate. Based on my research, in my case expatriating will result in about an 75% reduction in cost of living expenses but only a 30% reduction in pay.
You will lose reputation because the women back home, the White Knights and probably your own family will say that you just expatted because you couldnt handle strong independent women.
Not that it matter much really.
Precisely.
And then again it will add a bit to your value with the american skanks, because they know that by know you are not at their mercy anymore.
Lol! Good point. But why settle for an American bologna sandwich when you can have filet mignon?
Well, indeed !
If you’re starving, it’s good enough to keep you alive.
There’s still those that you wouldn’t f*ck with someone else’s d*ck though… 😛
Lol good point. I’ve had my share of American women, don’t get me wrong. (Over 70 and counting at age 33.) But I wouldn’t want to be committed to one of them.
If I get committed it’s going to be to a real woman, not a spoiled, whiny brat. I’m interested in commitments with Asian, Latin, Eastern European, and African women.
As much as I would love to leave the United States behind, I am reluctant to do so because this is one of the only nations in the world where the right to bear arms is enshrined and protected. I value that right and it is currently under siege. I know some SE Asian countries allow their citizens access to even fully-automatic firearms, but I suspect they would be less keen to allow a foreigner to own such things.
My father spent time in SE Asia during the Vietnam conflict and did not have much good to say about it. He said the Guamese (his word for them, not PC) stole anything that wasn’t nailed down and in Vietnam he slept with a visibly pregnant prostitute who drugged him and stole his camera. He missed his transport and had to commandeer a Jeep the next morning. Obviously it was different back then, but I’m sure there are very significant drawbacks to life in SE Asia today, especially for white men.
I saw a very interesting video the other day with one of these Illuminati think-tank gurus, his name was Paul Saffo, talking about how the future of the world was in economically significant city states. He was comparing the SF bay area to Singapore and Dubai in this case. It got very disturbing and I recommend you look him up. My point here is that you can run, but you can’t hide. They are trying to establish world government, for real. At some point, even if you run away to Latin America or SE Asia you will have to stand and fight. If you have the means, by all means travel, but don’t let yourself believe that you have really escaped for good. Men of conscience are at war with a voracious machine with a global reach.
Have you been to Europe? No one has guns. No gun crime. Carry a knife and you’ll be fine.
It is not a question of immediate, personal safety Roosh. I own guns but do not carry one, thought that is mostly due to state law. I move through high crime areas as well, I feel fine without a gun because I know what I’m doing and where I’m going. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t prefer to have one at all times though. Certainly, in parts of SE Asia where the knife is a way of life I would not trust my own blade skills against the locals unless I absolutely had no choice.
It is a question of property rights. Why does any state see fit to deny me a firearm? If they will deny that, what else will they deny? In short, the answer is that they will deny whatever the hell they please. Good luck buying property abroad, you’re liable to get screwed in many places. Mexico comes to mind. People should visit, but planning to stay is not always smart. Just look at some of the shifts that have taken place recently, say in Thailand over the last few years. Viktor Bout thought he was safe there. Look at McAffee.
I understand that this is not particularly important to you and many others, but it is one of the main reasons men who should know better are not already leaving the USA in droves. We have rights that few and in some cases no other nations can provide. I am not willing to give that up for some hot foreign pussy that treats me right. Things are bad here and getting worse, but you don’t have to flee the country to get a decent woman. Yet. We are getting there, but so will everywhere else eventually, that IS the plan. It is therefore necessary to fight a rear guard action even while retreating. That is the difference between tactical withdrawal and defeat.
I’m not trying to convince you or anyone else here to become gun crazy or paranoid, that is my own personal problem, but I just want you to understand another perspective here. There are things that make the USA exceptional and people are trying to destroy those things. If we don’t fight them the enemy will certainly triumph and go on to corrupt the refuges which you treasure so.
You make it seem like the USA has more freedoms, yet you can’t have a beer at the park with your buddies. You can’t drive afterwards even though you’re coherent. You can be locked up if a girl regrets having sex with you. You can be gunned down by a virgin maniac who hates society. You can lose your job for making a compliment to a woman at work. Your meat is pumped with drugs and antibiotics. Your water has estrogens.
So you enjoy your gun ownership and your freedom to worry about the revolution, while I enjoy life’s daily pleasures.
This “America is exceptional” argument is the same one we’ve been getting forced-fed since we were kids. And the more you travel, the more you examine it, the more you find that it doesn’t hold water. Of course, you get an efficient infrastructure (roads, schools, hospitals, etc), but you pay more and more for less and less. The women are substandard when compared to those of other countries. And the materialistic culture promotes a soul-shattering atomization of people into alienated units. Total spiritual emptiness.
Your concern with “property rights” and firearms is a bit misplaced. What good is having a .357 going to do you? Another trinket to play with, that is all. The focus should be on the overall quality of one’s life.
I don’t know if it’s any better, on balance, anywhere else. That is each man’s own choice. But I will no longer accept the official mantra, this Papal Ordinance from the American Curia that America is “unique” and “special”. It is not.
America is still unique in the sense that we have unique rights here. Rights that are fundamental and which are disregarded elsewhere. If you can’t see that then you are ignorant and you can go fuck yourself. A firearm is not a trinket, it is a tool, maybe you have never owned one… Trinkets don’t provide you with meat and they don’t kill motherfuckers who try to take your shit.
Property rights include everything from firearms to land. You can’t buy land safely in another country as a foreigner, in most all cases. Go ahead, try it. I FUCKING DARE YOU. In all but the most third world of countries, you cannot own a firearm unless you are an American. These rights matter, even if they don’t matter to you as an individual.
I am concerned about the same things you are, but you want to imply I am a fool for calling the rights America gives me valuable. Open your eyes! Just because you have never had to defend yourself doesn’t mean that others haven’t. SE Asia and Latin America are great destinations to get laid and eat, that is about it. They are largely unstable and dangerous in general. They are very worthy vacation spots. But you two both need to get real. Life is about more than pussy. Any good looking man with his wits about him can go get laid, almost anywhere on the planet. It is true that first world women have been SEVERELY tainted by feminism, but what will you do other than go fuck some Asian or Latina? That is your solution?
America WAS unique and it WAS special. That is rapidly diminishing and people who give up are the main problem, rather than the liberals pushing this shit down our throats because they have been doing that for decades. I love this website and I have nothing against bashing America, it deserves it. But credit is due where credit is due, and you are both sounding like a couple of anti-2A liberal faggots here with your chic gun bashing.
I am not criticizing what you all have going here, but rather explaining why so many American men are not choosing to flee the country. You city boys would be wise to listen. We have roots, property, rights that we value. If you are rootless, then by all means travel the world and settle wherever suits you. But don’t be surprised when you end up begging for help from the US embassy, and certainly don’t renounce your citizenship or you won’t even be able to do that.
You can either deal with what I’ve said or try to ignore it. I understand that you guys don’t care about guns, but that is just on example of the property rights that America has historically guaranteed. How do you prevent your little playgrounds abroad from being subverted by feminism? The vigor of your own pelvic thrusts won’t quite cut it, I assure you.
They will be subverted just like the USA and Europe and you know it just as well as I do. Will you just fuck increasingly more bizarre, more rural women who pick vegetables for a living as the feminism encroaches? Bury your heads in the sand like an ostrich and take it up your ass in a form of role reversal? I’m curious.
Guns or no guns, America and parts of Europe are worth saving from feminism/cultural Marxism. I have no problem with fucking hot foreign women, that is an AMERICAN TRADITION, even if you don’t know it. But can you really see yourself settling down in some shithole that will eventually be bombed out or gutted by feminism, one or the other? Again, I say, open your fucking eyes gentlemen. Open your fucking eyes to the idea that there are things in this world worth fighting for.
Nothing I have written here contradicts what you promote on this website, it only contradicts your own liberal, bourgeois programming. I respect you both as writers and hope you will heed what I am saying here to some degree, because frankly, calling yourself the part of the “manosphere” and then shitting all over the right to own a firearm is rather… fundamentally hypocritical. If you’re nothing but freelance gigolos then you should just call yourselves that and be done with it, less work trying to be something you’re not, like revolutionary.
Yea, America has become a hell on earth.
These are good points because in europe you do have more personal freedoms, and a drunk european bitch who fucks you doesn’t have regrets and make false rape accusations.
But the contaminates produced by Monsanto are present in europe. The quality assurance for food and drugs is dropping though it is better here than the States.
It is my firm belief that owning a gun is still essential wherever any man goes. In Berlin I had a conversation with a 20 something guy and got into the gun control issue. He had the stupidity to ask why i could not simply trust government. I had access to my tablet and was online during our chat (wifi is everywhere in the cafes and restaurants) so I pulled up a photo of a human skin lampshade made back during Hitler’s time and presented it to him. I said “This guy trusted the government, now look at him!” and he got defensive and then spewed the sound byte of morons: “yeah but that will never happen again.”
Amen! One can easily see America is not exceptional by merely visiting other countries and spending a little time there.
Some people will just never see The Matrix for what it is.
One might have some limited gun freedoms now, but turn on any TV news channel and suffer through a few minutes of it. These people won’t stop until they’ve grabbed all your guns. It’s on the news practically every damn night. The Long March started decades ago, and thinking you can stop it is like going out and standing in front of a train thinking you can stop it if you plant your feet strong enough. You’re gonna get run the hell over.
In my case, seeing The Matrix and realizing it controls, makes illegal, or eliminates basically everything that makes life worthwhile makes me want to get the fuck out as soon as possible.
“And the materialistic culture promotes a soul-shattering atomization of people into alienated units. Total spiritual emptiness.” A keen observation. I think people are trying to fill the void brought on by modern society with material possessions. It’s really quite sad if one looks at it from a broad enough perspective.
Agreed. The goal of the consumer/industrial/authoritarian complex is to strip us from our collective cultural heritage (ancient, medieval, modern) and replace it with a sterile consumerism. Although Americans enjoy great material comforts, it has come at the cost of an agonizing spiritual emptiness, which all of us sense but cannot quite verbalize.
To restore masculine virtues, we must undergo a spiritual and philosophical awakening. Seek the gods within you, I say. I know I will not be able to persuade everyone, but if I can plant just a little seed in a reader’s mind, then I will have accomplished my goal. I will put some flesh on these philosophical bones in the weeks ahead. Achtung, camaraden.
Agreed. The goal of the consumer/industrial/authoritarian complex is to strip us from our collective cultural heritage (ancient, medieval, modern) and replace it with a sterile consumerism. Although Americans enjoy great material comforts, it has come at the cost of an agonizing spiritual emptiness, which all of us sense but cannot quite verbalize.
To restore masculine virtues, we must undergo a spiritual and philosophical awakening. Seek the gods within you, I say. I know I will not be able to persuade everyone, but if I can plant just a little seed in a reader’s mind, then I will have accomplished my goal. I will put some flesh on these philosophical bones in the weeks ahead. Achtung, camaraden.
QUOTE (Fugasnaya) :
“America is still unique in the sense that we have unique rights here. Rights that are fundamental and which are disregarded elsewhere. If you can’t see that then you are ignorant and you can go fuck yourself. A firearm is not a trinket, it is a tool, maybe you have never owned one… Trinkets don’t provide you with meat and they don’t kill motherfuckers who try to take your shit.
Property rights include everything from firearms to land. You can’t buy land safely in another country as a foreigner, in most all cases. Go ahead, try it. I FUCKING DARE YOU.”
This has got to be the stupidest shit ever stated on the net. The rights that are laid down in the U.S. constitution have now become merely words on paper as the current socialists who have hijacked the country are simply doing it THEIR way and making it up as they go along.
And as far as property rights, I personally know several Americans who have lived in Argentina for years. And yes, Argentina with all of its corruption, my foreigner friends and colleagues still have their property rights. Likewise I know expats in Chile, and the UK and Germany all of whom own property as a foreigner, no problem. There are places where being a foreigner and owning property can be potentially problematic; Russia comes to my mind right now. But there exist many countries throughout the globe where property rights are respected.
I wil assume you are either a socialist troll trying to spread the common sound byte “America may not be perfect but it is still the best country to be in, and any country outside the States is hell”, or perhaps you are mentally deficient, or both.
Defensive battles ro rear-guard actions are a lost cause: you’re already retreating, just trying to buy time to run away.
The only difference between “tactical withdrawal” and running away with your tail between your legs is the words used to describe it – it’s the same action.
The men who “should know better” – DO. They are leaving. If for nothign else, for the adventure. We WANT some adventure in our lives, we WANT some sanity – and the US provides neither any more, and is working VERY HARD to ensure that you can no longer own those guns, or that ammo. Better to at least have hot pussy and live out your life, than to have endless frustration and no means to correct it.
Or, you could go on the offensive at home, stop drawing a “line in the sand,” writing letters and making calls to congresscritters and POTUS – they’re NOT LISTENING (I’ve got the responses to prove it.) They do what they want, when they want, and you little people are irrelevant to them. It’s worse than Dilbert, at least there the boss is clueless; here in the real world, he’s bought and paid for, intentionally, maliciously evil.
Don’t fool yourself, between the used-up “never were”s (women) and the entry barriers to making a profit in anything remotely honest, and the limitations on your freedoms being shoved down our throats? We’re ehaded to being a banana republic ourselves, where the laws are applied against US, but never our “betters.” Don’t forget that sacred “enshrined” right is under assault, has been for almost 100 years, and that the NRA is playing rear-guard action almost as long. Everything is “reasonable.” Everything but actually obeying the law. Insider trading? Illegal for us, legal for Congress. Owning guns? Legal for them – Feinstein has CCW – illegal for US, we little people, we peasants. We could go on… It’s pointless. Stupidity in Boston notwithstanding, we MUST do something before we’re chained into our cubicles physically as well as financially and mentally. (I exaggerate, the chains are striongest when built by the slave and invisible: Economic servitude.)
[As for Boston, if it’s terrorist, it’s amazingly poorly done and pointless. Makes me think publicity stunt or false flag. Small consolation to those maimed and killed.]
The things that made the USA exceptional have left the USA. Manufacturing is overseas, ingenuity is overseas, freedom… Dunno. It ain’t here. Freedom isn’t in deciding whose brand name I want on my ass. It’s being free to make mistakes and to build something. It was built by owning property. Remove property rights, remove capacity to defend yourself, you induce dependence on the government (mommy or daddy, say), and after that, it’s learned helplessness, just like the ghettos in D.C., Newark, NYC, Chicago, etc.
Finally, you’re right about fighting them. But wrong about when and where. Evil must be fought EVERYWHERE, ALL THE TIME. Rome wasn’t the first, won’t be the last. Greece. Sparta, Athens. Byzantium. China. Japan. Korea. Kush (Ethiopa). UK. Macedonia. There’s a lot to learn, but sane (“Conservative” is as close as you get in America, or maybe a few independents) bull ahead in the WRONG ways. (Liberals are even worse.) Not Classical Liberalism (Ideals that founded America), they are two sides of the same coin, both extremist ideologues. We’ve allowed them to corrupt our country, our thinking, our very selves.
Why feed that beast? Kill it through war or attrition. Fight or leave, both work. [But target the governemnt, not the citizens. Didn’t work for the IRA, won’t work for anything positive in the US. And it’ll make a mess of the country for decades even if it works. Pointless.]
Give me the child for six years, he will be a Bolshevik forever. (Public Education, plank in communist platform)
But it has nothing to do with gun control. One can easily buy a weapon in Switzerland but that country has very low gun crime. Likewise with Canada. The only drawback about Europeans, and I say this with respect because Europe is a very cultured part of the world, is that they all tend to like high taxes and nanny government. Not all, but most. They insist they are not socialists, but they are. The men are less violent, even in night clubs. I have found the Germans to be quite friendly even when shit faced drunk. A similar nightclub in New York or LA it would be asshole-central.
Yet still their socialism is bothersome, and especially now with so many americans being sold on socialism, this just up amps european socialist mentalities.
Do you know anything about carrying a knife across Schengen borders? And what sort of regulations (if any) there generally are in Europe about carrying a concealed knife in public, and how likely local police usually are about giving you trouble for having one? I’m just wondering what sort of legal risks there are.
Better enjoy your life, not the conspiracy theories.
Guns have little use in modern war.
I HIGHLY recommend anyone considering ‘exile’, they read ALL they can on the ‘PT’ (Permanent Tourist) philosophy. The original concept was developed by newsletter writer Harry Schulze and popularized by ‘WG Hill’ in PT.
It provides concrete, practical information (albeit somewhat dated) for any considering becoming an expat regardless of country.
Having read it for the first time 16 years ago, I’ve applied many of its ideas with multiple residences (US, SE Asia), assets overseas, etc.
And yet are the women who want real men going to expatriate (or would it be exmatriate?). One can find something different, perhaps even freedom of a kind (not being ABLE to do something is not the same as having the thing criminalized), so while it is a righteous act to cry “Non serviam” at the devil, it is best to insure that one can live a full life elsewhere. Care to elaborate? Mainly the quote:
America will be unable to offer its ambitious young men either a decent job or decent women.
If you cannot work your specialized field either place, why move? If you cannot find someone you want to be a mother for your children easily either place, why move?
One final quibble. This is the freeze frame. The culture of death is suicidal, and will die, and thrash around and make a noisy death rattle. But it cannot exist. What you describe is not something dying, but a zombie which is already dead. Unpaid police and many paid police won’t do something dishonorable when it comes down to it.
I agree with this wholeheartedly. Especially how a man of virtue and inner strength lives with the firsts in another country. Happened to me. After I married one of them who owned a gym of his own had contacted me through Facebook to tell me that my “positive energy” was reaping me rewards wherever I went!
It is true, wealth and fame are not what they seem, a treadmill is a great description; but a rat race in a science lab is better. For the track is already prepped ahead of time for you, like a fox hunt, and the end of the race is already predetermined.
To escape, and become legend is the one in a thousand, not the rule; never forget that.
The Old Testament, in Proverbs asks why one will chase after riches, as they fly away like an eagle. All for nothing.
Often, when everything you have is stripped away, it shows you that what you had you never needed in the first place. It was not your power, but your chains and yoke.
Let’s all move to a smaller country, say New Zealand, and make it ours. Seeing as the police state is also in full force in the UK, with NLP being used on the public at large and the constant erosion of personal rights due to the move towards collectivism.
Freedom is a myth in the West. I don’t want to pay taxes to be used for causes that I don’t agree with. When we pay taxes in the UK, some of this money is given as ‘charity’ to third world countries, where forcible sterilisation is done on the populations of those countries. I also don’t want money spent on domestic causes that I don’t agree with. Recently, our freedom of speech has been under attack and the public has been losing those rights.
Unfortunately, a lot of stuff taking place in the UK is also taking place in the US (at a slower rate) and even in Europe (say, in Hungary, where I was recently). Where is a place that is more relatively free of such problems?
Ultimately, the UK won’t survive. Too many domestically thick and lazy people, too many disenfranchised immigrants, a population that cannot care for itself, people are too dependent on the gov’t, too many people and not enough local resources (we are a net importer of food and goods). We’re [email protected]
Does it really have to come down to every man for himself?
Yes.
THEN it can be rebuilt. Not before. 🙁
“To an American, exile—that is, leaving America for another country—is nearly unthinkable. But it may be time to think the unthinkable.”
Ironically, the reason for this ^ is because of people who think like this. /
“To a far greater extent than us ignorant, arrogant, spoiled Americans, Europeans have lived through wars, revolutions, civil unrest, collapsing economies, famines, and pestilences. Historically, Europeans are far more inclined to pick up and move when necessary, to migrate when required: they have been doing it for centuries.”
I read that short story when I was younger. The conclusion I drew from it is that Leftism and Euro culture-worship is a fundamental evil. Leftists are “the country of the blind” that wants to chemically or mentally castrate men because they are perceived as “defective women”. Leftists are the ones who think someone is mentally ill if they don’t want a “Wise Latina” applying her narcissistic “superior experience” to American law. Leftists are the ones who bend themselves into pretzels coming up with slurs like “heteronormative” in order to try to describe the default state for 99% of humanity in the most sneering and exclusionary terms they can imagine.
It is a century of Leftism that has made the once free and great nation of America into an unlivable shithole. And now they want to cut and run from the mess they made! Well, I suppose it is,at least,consistent. Are you going to learn your lesson and stop voting for Socialism and/or Communism when you move to Nicaragua or Japan or wherever? Fuck no. You’ll go there and fuck their country up for them too while you sneer at their “arrogant”,”stupid”,”backwards” beliefs. The Europeans that came to America fleeing their Communist shitholes, WHICH THEY PROBABLY VOTED FOR, set up all the conditions for more pogroms and Holocausts right here in the good ol’ USA all while sneering at how spoiled and arrogant and stupid we were, I imagine their descendants will carry on in that “proud” tradition of ruining entire nations and blaming it on the natural inhabitants of those nations.
The thing that hits me like a 50 pound sledgehammer to the stomach is how fucking stupid,predictable, and avoidable all this shit was. All you have to do is give up your fucked-up wannabe do-gooder leftist notions that have failed you OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN. All you have to do to stop this shit is just abandon these ideas,which have PROVEN THEMSELVES WORTHLESS,time and time again, and the cycle is broken.
What is so attractive to you about pinning all the world’s evils on heterosexual Caucasian males and human freedom that you’re willing to risk starvation,imprisonment, and destroy whole societies in order to propagate these fantasies and watch as your philosophies fail to materialize the socialist utopia you predict and long for time and again? How many human lives is your hatred for freedom and peace of mind worth? How much of your own suffering are these fantasies worth? You may get away with this stuff 50 times in a row, but one of these days,someone is going to successfully pin your disastrous policies on you and your Leftism. What will it be worth then,when contemplating your mistakes from the gallows?
I think that the successful pinning was the French Revolution. That was against Aristocrats, which may be the same thing as the Socialist (or Communist) elites, but that’s open to debate.
Madame Guillotine didn’t care, won’t care, either way.
Lot of interest in this subject. Lots of comments. I would add some things.
While I do not disavow Roosh’s estimation of a place, remember he is judging places as spot that is or is not conducive to his particular regime of travel. But if you live in a place, get to know people there, have a life there, then a different criteria of good or bad come into play.
The first criteria is the visa regime. You need to find a place that allows you to enter on a tourist visa, then renew the visa within the country, and allows you to perform the “visa run”, where you take a bus or flight out of the country, turn around and come back in. And there is literally no limitation on your time there if you follow this regime. For now Colombia allows this. Other comments could fill out the list of other countries.
Second, the place needs to be a very “cash” oriented sort of place. When business is done mostly in cash, then that gives you the hole to find your place in the “informal” economy of the place. Again, I am most familiar with Colombia and it fits this criteria. Even when you pay a formal account, you go to a bank, or to some other payment center, perhaps a supermarket for utility bills, and pay in cash. Depending on the bill, it may get credited immediately to the merchant you are paying, or you may have to hand carry the receipt from the bank back to the entity you are paying. But most stuff is just “show me the money”. You pay in cash. And your passport is sufficient ID for most transactions.
Third, take some sort of IP phone with you.. I took a Vonage. It was bulky but it worked. You can create a “bridge” between the network cat 5 plug on the side of a computer, the LAN connection, to the Wi-Fi connection. I could plug the vonage box into the laptop and the “bridge” would share the wi-fi with the vonage box. And I make perfect land line quality phone calls to the US with a local US number showing up on the caller ID of the person called. There is Magic Jack. Maybe something like Skype. But I know Vonage fits the bill as being able to mask the fact you are outside the country. And often that is necessary.
Fourth, Get some kind of VPN service before leaving. There are commercial providers like IPVanish. For the sake of being out of the country, you want a VPN that uses servers within the United States. Here is an example. I tried to wire money to myself using Western Union using a credit card while I was in Colombia. I had lost my ATM card and needed actual cash until the new ATM card arrived. Western Union recognized the transaction from coming from Colombia and shut it down. That normally is in your favor and is prevents fraud, but when you need something, then you don’t want those prohibitions screwing with you. Second, many downloads, especially pages that are advertising driven will block foreign downloaders. Zune was one. I couldn’t download the executable for my Zune to install on another computers. Espn is probably another. Youtube blocks a ton of videos.
Get a cell phone where ever you go for the place as soon as you get. Do not delay.
Also Google Translate is your friend. It is the best translator I know of. It will speak the translated phrase and it does idiomatic translations like “What a drag” get translated in Spanish to “Que mal” and nothing about actual “Dragging”. It will convert whole pages into readable English.
Learn whatever the Craiglist thing is for the place. Search for “Romanian want ads” or whatever, keep searching, search for “Romanian expats”. I can tell you about 10 different sites to find cheap housing in Colombia. Roomates.com works for there to find a landing spot. compartoapto.com is another. (“Share apartment” in Spanish).
In every circumstance, such as leasing a place to live, there may be rules, but usually there is always a work around. Sharing is one way to circumvent it. The key though is hitting the place with cash in an American bank account and a ATM card. It would be best if you well over a year’s worth of money. Most places that are not prime OECD countries or places with highly developed economies, $20,000 is a lot of money. I had a friend in Colombia that did the reverse “green card marriage”, he found a girl, and she married him for some cash then she split. If the place is prohibitive about this, then maybe you’re in the wrong place. It doesn’t give you right to work in the place, but you do get residency and eliminates a lot of issues.
The key is to hit the place as if you were poorest person in the country and to spend even a dollar is like pulling a tooth. Go as totally to the floor as you can in your initial lifestyle. It is very tempting to use cash to solve your issues when you first arrive, to run and chase the women because you can. And it is far better to wait. To bide your time. To make friends with the men but to befriend them in a way that you are not being played. You can hunker down, stay to yourself, learn how the public transit works, ride it, eat as cheap as you can, stay in as mean a place as you can stand. I advise walking a lot. Just walk the city or town. And believe me, things will come to you. Just walk, and ask questions, about businesses, about materials, about construction techniques. And the people will respect you for trying to live poor as they do. And not be the shitass gringo. Women will come. But take care of yourself first. They will suck you dry if you let them. Stay away from them until you have yourself situated.
There is thing about you that you don’t know yet. You know things you don’t know you know that the people in the place your are going don’t know. There are things that seem obvious to you here, that you never think of, until you get in another place and they don’t do them in that way. I was in fast food place and the front was highly inefficient, highly and stupidly organized. And just from eating in fast food places your whole life in America, you know things about the organization, the process, the efficiency that they don’t know because they just tried to figure it out. And you have seen it already figured out. So you have value that you do know that you have.
To me, my recommendation is that you watch those talks between the Colombian Government and the FARC guerillas. And you prepare yourself to get ready to go. When a peace accord is signed, you go right where the FARC was, east of the Andes mountains, and you dig in now. Foreigners have not been in those places yet. Mear Cucuta might be a good place. It currently is a little rough. It is right near the Venezuela border and has been quite a point of rocking and rolling due to smuggling across the border. But if the FARC drops out then violence will drop. Also the same could be said for the Ecuador border. It is very rough today. But again a lot of that is due to guerillas moving back and forth and using black market activity for funding. The benefit of both of those places is you do the visa run in taxi in a matter of hours.
The future of the world is going to be better, and already is, for those places that do one of two things, they produce food or they produce energy. Those that produce one or the other will trade with the other to get what they need. Every thing else is secondary. Colombia does both and in a big way.
Do not be afraid of the rural buses in Colombia. Not any more. Your opportunity is probably out there. In the hinterlands of Colombia. Show some stones. Get on those buses, talk to the people. It is 10 dollars to travel from Cali to Popayan in the south, about a three hour trip. I think it was about the same to go from Armenia Colombia to Cali. You could fly into Medellin, then travel to both those areas, for 20 dollars.
Oh yeah, one more thing. For places to stay the night in a pinch when you first get to new place, Colombia has these Motels. Couples rent them by the hour. Most people live with family and when they want to be alone, they use these motels. But the rate for night is still cheaper than a real hotel and they are much better than a hostel. The fucked thing about them is that sometimes the only TV is porn and they may not have internet. They are strictly a cash business and the people will work with you. They’re pretty decent. Just tell what you are doing. I have had them let me leave my stuff in the office and them come back that night. So ask a cabbie for a cheap Motel. Motels are always these fuck hotels. Some can be as cheap as 15 for the night. A very basic room with a bed and TV. I have paid $50 and got a fucking suite with jacuzzi, dancer pole, bar, shower in the middle of the room, regular fuck palaces. Some of them are narco money laundering places, they turn cash into bank deposits are a just done up to hilt, and nobody stays there.
Here, I met these guys in Colombia. They had a truck load of tangerines. They rented the truck, bought the tangerines at a farm, paying the farmer a better price than maybe a store might, drove the oranges into the city and went into blocks with apartments and shouted “Tangerines” over a hand loudspeaker. The women looked out the window, saw a truck with tangerines and came out. They sold bags of them cheaper than the stores. I asked if it was a good business, they said “Si mucho”.
Also, it is better to be somewhere that has climate that you live with neither air conditioning or heat. Colombia has lot of places like that. Warm days and crisp nights. Where no dwelling no matter how rich or poor has heater or air conditioning.
Also it better if it rains in a place and water is not an issue, then food is usually cheaper.
The thing that is most true about this post is that “lose the materialism” idea. None of that shit is making you happy. My life is testament. The struggle to maintain is keeping you a slave. You want to be free? Then get down to a suitcase of stuff. Where you have about 4 or 5 shirts, that you can wash by hand and hang up to dry. Get down to where all you have is laptop, some headphones, an internet connection. Where you can live simply, eat cheaply, get pot cheap, some beers cheap.
Its better than what we have here. And it is not hard to do. You just have to want to. And start.
Wow.
These are some good nuts-and-bolts items, thanks for posting Mark.
I have a bunch, but let me add in just a few that are off the top of my head at this moment…
Google translate is good for basic translations, but it is not perfect. The two obvious flaws to me that I have experienced is that sometimes the system does not distinguish between a “positive” and a “negative” for example “He cannot go” sometimes gets translated as “He can go”. This also varies depending on which language you are translating to and from. Sometimes the system mistakes the person, i.e. instead of “I” the system will think it is “he / she”. This is common in spanish translations. This may be due to the formal spanish usted form uses the word “su” to mean “your” in formal usted spanish. But in informal spanish the word “su” means “his / her”.
However bearing in mind that Google has its technical flaws, I do agree that it is a very useful tool.
Then there is the time period of when it takes each expat to at least feel comfortable in his new environment. For me it was around 6 months. Within the 6 months there is always going to be doubts, reconsiderations and the possibility of thinking that maybe life in the States was not so bad etc. But these second thoughts are normal. Getting cold feet is part of the process. Relax, do not worry about it. Over time your new world will become familiar to you.
The technological communication world we live in today can also be used for our advantage, as was already stated one can speak with other expats, and blogs dedicated to starting another life. And I am speaking of blogs written single men looking for a sane family and sane life and sane woman on the planet, not Ms. American Fat Bitch and her slave husband who relocated to another country. The articles on the blogs from Mrs. are going to be different and useless to guys like us.
Then there might be expat communities that exist in the country where you want to go. But like blogs, be careful of what these communities consists ofIn these expat communities it is interesting how many plugged-in American men live with their American wife-slave masters. Sitting there and talking with these people sometimes its as if you are back in the States. The only difference is that perhaps in these expat social circles outside the USA, you can call an american woman a stupid fat pig without her calling the police. Now how’s that for freedom?
“Lose the materialism…None of that shit is making you happy.” Good observation. It’s taken most of my life for me to realize that.
These are lyrics from a song (written in a foreign language) that I really like because they apply to this discussion about materialism:
Your life is running through your fingers like sand
Time is flying by
You’re running in circles and you’re going insane
Yet you’ll never get enough
You truly will never get enough if you stay on the hedonic treadmill like most Americans do. Your life will be over, and you’ll have only a lifetime of toil and a few possessions (crumbs off the table) to show for it.
It’s a pity that Musk guy didn’t start ten years sooner. We could now be considering migrating to his Martian space colony with like-minded men and women instead of choosing a lesser-evil police state here on Earth.
I could have remained in America six years ago when I went there with work&travel
program for students, but I was a chicken. Not so afraid of being an illegal immigrant (if you got caught, for $6-7.000 you’ll find instant a husband/wife) but afraid of being nobody, no social status, no professional degree. I couldn’t imagine another six years
of studying and working like a slave for paying my tuition, which was quite expensive there. I was a 5th year college student than and I had one more year till graduation so I decided to return home after the summer season . All my colleagues with whom I went remained out there and now they are living their American dream. I played for safety, but it’s also a dangerous game. Americans are complaining but there are so many people who would like to be in your place and live in America and struggle and risk, cause if you don’t risk anything, you risk even more.
On the other hand, there are foreigners establish in my country who always are saying: what a wonderful life and I just ask myself: what it’s so wonderful here? You’ll always love what you don’t have and forget to appreciate what you have.
Is there good hunting in any of these popular ex-pat places? If I can’t fill my freezer with meat and fish, I’m sticking with he good old USA.
Grass is always greener on the other side… you think Europe is ahead…. i laugh out of my ass…. The EU parliament is a bunch of the most corrupt, incompetent fools, with the president unelected and the structure more or less copied from the Soviet Politburo,
Wealth is robbed from good EU states to help the more corrupt and incompetent ones, so much so the UK is talking about opting out, even though it’s police state system more resembles the USSR than any other country and the women are more hard ass feminist than anywhere else.
Meanwhile our cronies in the EU Parliament draw themselves six figure salaries, whopping expense accounts and lucrative positions on boards of corporations all while spending billions writing pages of legislation about what size a banana can be annd actively trying to ban the sale of basic harmless products like vitamin pills. (because big pharma wants you on chemo and soon.)
And that’s before we get into the agricultural subsides and crop dumping in Africa way below market rate, to stop the farmers there being able to produce.
Antarctica is about the only place left, Roll on global warming…..
There are other places to expat to besides socialist europe – latin america or southeast asia.
Honestly, if you don’t moving somewhere remote (like the Pyrenees) and making due with what you have, you’ll be fine.
US isn’t so bad in this respect. Find a place in Montana where you don’t have to pay real-estate taxes on your land, move out somewhere very remote and chill. The country will go to hell, but you’ll still be fine burning your split wood while roasting that rabbit that you hunted (I’m over-simplifying, but you get the idea).
Oh, and, EU does not mean Europe 😉 .
fantastic post quintus, really good
“To an American, exile—that is, leaving America for another country—is nearly unthinkable”
– kinda funny for a nation created by expats from all over the world.
The Renaissance man aknowlwdged that the (Greek and Roman) past offered the best guides as how to shape their time. The Manosphere is (yet) far too concerned with present day thought and culture.
I call all Men to look back, to look centuries back in time. You will see treasures the present cannot offer you.
lol, I was born in Eastern Europe, lived in US and Germany, never owned property (only rented). Me worry about moving?
The one thing that I do want, is 20-50 acres of land. I don’t even care if there’s no water. The only thing that I give a damn about is if there are property taxes. The more remote, the better (but not as cold as Alaska).
THAT, my brothers, is what I crave. And yes, I’d settle there by building a log cabin… as a first thing.
I’m thinking of just moving into an abandoned Eastern European village (I speak Russian passably, I’ll be fine).