When Binary Goes Bad…

internet technology computer pc

I had a conversation with a guy the other day who chooses anonymity online for a variety of reasons. One of them apparently is that he doesn’t look a “certain way.” That got me thinking…

We judge a book by its cover, it’s just the way it is. If you are going to preach a certain way, you had better know what you are talking about if you want to be taken seriously. Those that do know will find out eventually. This guy knows a lot of things about a lot of subjects. If I had to hazard a guess, a lot of his wisdom and knowledge he has gained through the “school of hard knocks.” He’s lived it and he’s lived through it.

It’s a damn shame that he hasn’t come out of anonymity. I for one would like to know what he looks like. Not to judge him and think he’s a fraud and a phony, and to point out discrepancies, but to look upon him as another Man, a peer, and hopefully one day, to call him a friend. The more interactions I’ve had with him, the more I want to sit down with him and have a beer and talk shit. The guy has had life experiences, a lot of them I recognize because I have had similar ones.

Binary is a bad thing because life isn’t binary. Nothing is truly black or white. Nothing is completely either/or. Sometimes “and” shows up. Sometimes it’s not either/or, but both. A lot of guys who have binary thinking are missing the nuance. Life is nothing but nuance really.

What works for me may not work for you at all. One woman may find me to be irresistible. Another right behind her may find me to be insufferable. I “opened” them with the exact same “lines and phrases.” I used the same tonality and as far as I know, I used the same body language. Why did it “work” on one and not the other?

Truth? Who really knows. That’s nuance. All I can say is that one was receptive while the other one was not. I succeeded and I failed all within a few moments.

Binary thinking on one end would say that my “system” was a roaring success, but that same thinking on the other end would say that it was a complete failure and doesn’t work. That’s what I’m seeing a lot of these days. Guys getting to the granular level with things that when taken to that level of granularity, lose their context. They lose their nuance. Like I said a paragraph or so ago, everything is nuance. Seduction is nothing but nuance.

Taking nutrition advice from a guy who is morbidly obese is probably not a good idea. But does that guy need to be absolutely “shredded and jacked?” I don’t necessarily believe so.

Taking dating advice from a guy who isn’t necessarily attractive may seem like a bad thing to do, but then again, what’s his track record? I’m not just talking about pure, raw numbers here. Plenty of guys can buy pussy. How does he interact with women? History is full of examples of men that were not attractive by any means, nor were they tall, or wealthy, or even necessarily fit, but women loved them and flocked to them.

Taking financial advice from a guy, just because he has money may not be in your best interest. How did he come about attaining his money? Did he inherit it? Did he walk into a bank and point a gun at the teller? Did the money fall off the back of an armored truck? Nuance. Binary thinking would lead you to believe that just because the guy has money, he knows how to make money.

Just because a guy is old enough to be your father doesn’t mean he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. It doesn’t necessarily make his thoughts and rationale outdated. Dig deeper keeping context in mind and look for the nuance. Yes it takes time and it takes work. It takes energy and it takes critical thinking, and it won’t all happen immediately. Just like life itself, nothing usually comes easily or quickly.

Learn to get out of binary thinking. Learn that everything eventually is nuance. Learn this lesson or you get to burn. Learn that it’s okay that you want to judge a book by its cover, but maybe, just maybe, once you’ve judged that book by its cover, maybe instead of putting it down and walking away from it, maybe it might be worth your time to read a few paragraphs of the first chapter. Maybe give it a quick skim before moving on.

Or stay locked in your on/off binary line of thinking, I don’t care. All I can say is that it will be your loss and that lost opportunity may never come around to you again.

To you Good Sir, the one I had the conversation with.. I hope you read this, I hope this finds its way to you. I hope one day to see your face and to be able to sit down and have a drink with you and talk about life. I think that we have a lot in common.

Here’s to one day. Cheers.

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“Hold My Beer…”

person holding white labeled bottle

When we talk about men versus other men, we are talking about intrasexual competition. We are guys, we like to brag, to boast, and to compete. You all are with me so far right?

What if it all sums up to:

“Dude, hold my beer.”

A guy goes online and mentions/brags that he just got laid.

Inevitably another guy sees this and..

Dude! Hold my beer!

“I ONLY bang 9’s and 10’s Brah!”

Another guy goes online and mentions that he’s happily married with children.

Hold my beer…

“I’m happily married with children too AND a side of JESUS!”

A third guy talks about working out.

Hold my beer…

“Dude! I just benchpressed a Mack truck!”

A final guy talks about firearms and getting into “prepping.”

Hold my beer…

“Dude I own a HK-AR-AK-4792FS! I have a DECADE of supplies in my thermonuclear-proof, heavy duty, solid-steel and concrete Fort Knox of a bunker, two and a half miles underground under my house! And I just cranked out 40,000 rounds of 45 ACP, 100k of 7.62 full metal heat seeking missles, all while fixing my 1/2 ton while banging my wife of 35 years who is only 22 and happens to be a soft 9, impregnating her with our 7th son! What the fuck have you done you fucking loser?!”

Hold my beer indeed.

Power Dad’s and Mommy bloggers are just saying hold my beer.

Guys pointing at green lines on pictures of guys leaning in are just saying “Hold my beer! Look how straight and fucking narrow I stand!”

I’ve mentioned to a couple of people who stumbled onto the ‘Sphere that it’s like going back to high school and peeking into the boy’s locker room. Lots of bravado, chest thumping, bragging, and outright lies. But I actually think it’s more like going camping and hanging around the campfire and getting drunk and then Billy decides to jump through the fire to get a few laughs and to show how “brave” he is.

Of course Wade can’t be outdone, so it’s “Hold my beer…”

The next thing you know Wade is naked from the waist down other than his boots, his ball hairs just got singed off, and he has a first or second degree burn on his sac.

That’s what the ‘Sphere is. Come to think of it, that’s pretty much what all of Twitter is.

“Dude! Hold my beer…”

The next time your favorite “guru” decides to run at the mouth, throw that phrase in front of whatever he said. See if I’m wrong. Check the replies too. Lot’s of guys telling other guys to hold their beers.

Keep this in mind when you decide if you want to believe in whatever shit they are shoveling.

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The “Black Pill”

neon signage

Apparently while I’ve been doing other things, MGTOW and “Incels” have become a thing again in the ‘Sphere.

I don’t really understand people’s fascination with either group, they hold very little interest for me. Like Darth Vader said, “Asteroids (MGTOW’s and Incels) do not concern me, Admiral.”

They don’t concern me because I’m not one of them. I don’t have a problem with meeting and attracting women and getting laid and women don’t leave a foul taste in my mouth, so I really have nothing in common with them.

So what are my thoughts about both groups? I don’t think about them at all. Unless you find yourself in one of these groups, for whatever reason, you shouldn’t concern yourself with them either. Life is too short to worry about them.

Speaking of life, life is absurd. If you haven’t already figured it out by now, I’m an atheist. I don’t make a big deal about it because there’s nothing to make a big deal about. You believe in whatever you want to believe in and I’ll believe what I believe and we’ll call it good.

Life is absurd because for me, there is no afterlife. There is no heaven or hell but what we make here. There is no punishment or reward for a life well-lived (well-behaved) in the here-after. That makes things really easy for me. Since there is no afterlife, I might as well enjoy the life here that I have for as long as I’m alive.

Where life gets absurd is when you ask the question, “What is the meaning of life?” The answer to that question, for me, is very simple. It’s this:

The meaning of life is whatever you make of it.

That’s where things can get absurd. We want there to be “more” to it, but it’s really that simple. It’s absurd because there is no meaning to life inherently. So you could say, “To hell with it. I’ll just kill myself.”

To which I’ll say, “Yes you could. If that is what you choose. No one is stopping you and no one can stop you if you are serious about ending your life.”

Life is absurd but it isn’t a tragedy. I’m quoting Chest “Chesty” Rockwell from Twitter on this one. Life just is. What you think about it or what you believe about it is where you get to say it’s either good, bad, or otherwise. I believe it was Shakespeare who said, “There is no good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” Life is no different. Life just is. And life goes on. With or without you. Life itself is indifferent to you and me. It’s indifferent to all of us.

So you can choose to be unhappy, depressed, cynical, and angry about it. Or you can choose to look at it in a different way. Either way, life is indifferent.

“Life is beautiful and outside there is no salvation.” – Albert Camus

Life is hard sometimes. Life can be a struggle. You will find yourself dealing with loss and setbacks. You’ll find yourself not always getting the things you want. That’s life. Life wasn’t meant to be about you getting everything to your heart’s desire. It doesn’t work that way. Learn to deal with that and live with it, or don’t. Either way life is indifferent and nobody gives a shit.

Taking the “Black Pill” is choosing to look at life and say fuck it. “The juice isn’t worth the squeeze,” and all of that stuff. It’s about giving up. It’s about quitting. Want to quit? That’s fine by me, because I don’t give a shit. I have my own problems, just like you do. I have my own shit to deal with, let alone yours. You aren’t my responsibility, just like I’m not yours.

I wrote about a woman that I had a relationship with back when I was eighteen. When that relationship ended, I seriously considered putting the business end of a shotgun in my mouth and pulling the trigger. If I had done that I wouldn’t be here today. I would have been dead at 21.

I look back at those 27 years gone by and I’m blown away by the things I have done, the people I have met and the friendships I have made. The women that I have loved and they loved me back. As of this writing almost all of those relationships with those women have ended in one way or another. Sometimes I chose to end them, in other cases, they chose to end it. Some relationships ended about as well as a relationship could end, some of them ended in near disaster with a lot of hurt feelings and bruised egos on both sides.

If I had ended my life back then, none of the beauty and hardship of life that I have experienced would have happened. And I would still be dead.

I ran into that ex-girlfriend from way back when a few years ago. When I first noticed her, it took her a minute to remember who I was. That’s how little our relationship meant to her I guess. Apparently I wasn’t even a blip on her radar. Once she remembered who I was, we talked and had a few laughs strolling down memory lane. I think back to when I was that 21 year old kid ready and willing to kill himself over this girl who had turned into a woman after 20+ years.

What happened in her life from after we broke up and then met again 20+ years later? She got fat. She has been married and divorced twice. She has a teenage son from one of the husband’s. She has buried her own mother a year or so before we ran into each other. She has been a part of a business that had success and had also failed and went into bankruptcy.

She got over me and moved on with her life way before I had moved on from her. What would have happened if I had killed myself? She would have probably done the exact same thing that she did, the only difference is that she might have mourned me for a minute before moving on. I would still be dead. I don’t say this with any bitterness or anger, it’s just the truth.

When my mother died back in September of 2018, my father and I did the thing where you stand in line by the casket and you shake people’s hands and hug them and listen to them say what they have to say. Everyone said, “I’m so sorry for your loss. She was a great woman. If you need anything, call me.” And after they shook hands and gave hugs, they went about their day. Life went on for them and they didn’t miss a beat.

Same thing happened a couple of months ago when the last of my father’s best friends died. I went to the funeral, shook hands, gave hugs, said what a great guy he had been, and when I left, I told my Dad that I was sorry that his last best friend had died. Then I went on with my life. My Dad nodded and went on with his life too. Life goes on.

My ex-wife threatened to kill herself when I told her I wanted a divorce back in 2014. She didn’t really want to kill herself, she just didn’t want me to leave. But I was leaving no matter what. This was the second time that I had seriously considered putting a gun in my mouth and pulling the trigger. I was either going to kill myself or I was going to get divorced. One way or another, I was getting out. I didn’t kill myself and neither did my ex. What if she had though? I would have mourned her for a bit and I would have moved on with my life.

I remember telling her, “I don’t want you to kill yourself, but if that’s what you want to do, you’ll find a way to do it. All I ask is that if you are serious about doing it, don’t do it in my house, I don’t want to have to come home and clean that shit up.”

Pretty cold-blooded, I know. But it’s true. If someone wants to kill themselves bad enough, nothing will stop them and they will find a way. I know this because I know people who have killed themselves. Nothing was going to stop them and so they did. Otherwise it’s a cry for attention and it’s manipulation at its finest.

Every time I’ve stared down the barrel of a gun and considered ending my life, I ended up not doing it. I got help if that was what was warranted. I changed up the situation if that was what was needed. I did whatever it took.

And life got better. Every. Single. Time.

Life is what it is and life is indifferent to you and your struggles. And nobody gives a shit.

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The choice is always yours.

We all face the “Black Pill” at one point in our lives or another. It’s up to you to decide what you want to do about it. Life is beautiful and it is short. It’s far shorter than you and I both can imagine. Do you want to make it meaningful for you? Or do you want to mope around about it? Either way, nobody gives a shit and life goes on.

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