Tag: religion

Religion

Rob Says2 Comments

Whatever religion you follow, whatever you believe in or align with, stop and ask yourself this:

Do you believe in it because it’s what you actually know? Or is it because it’s what you were told was so? What was “right?” What was “correct?”

Whatever particular belief, especially when it comes to religion, was most likely something that your parents and your society and culture put into you. Nothing necessarily wrong with that, but do you believe in it because it actually works for you? Or do you believe in it because it’s “just something you’ve always done?”

Have you given it more than a cursory thought? Or is it, “this is just the way it is?”

I started out as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or a Mormon. I didn’t “choose” this particular religion, it was chosen for me. It was chosen for me because my parents were both (not very active) members of the Church. It was chosen for me because I grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah which is the “capital” for the LDS Church. It was chosen for me because that was what the majority of the people that I lived with, grew up with, and interacted with, believed in. When in Rome…

Chances are, if you grew up in the United States, or in the West in general, you are probably some flavor of Christian. Same can be said for being a Muslim in the Middle East.

If your faith, whatever it is, works for you, then that is fantastic. Honestly I don’t care what you believe in, or if you believe in anything at all. I’m not here to judge what you believe in or to “convert” you to something else.

I am asking you though, is what you believe in something that works for you? Is it something that you came about via your own judgement, your own informed choice and consent? Or is it something you struggle with and it was something that was “handed down” to you from your family, your society, and your culture? Is it actually what you believe in?

My religious beliefs were handed down to me via my parents and society. It caused me a lot of unnecessary pain and suffering because I couldn’t reconcile what I was being told was true with what I was seeing with my own eyes. The answer that I would invariably get to my questions was “You just have to have faith.” And that wasn’t good enough for me.

When I stepped away from religion, it wasn’t a “clean break.” It was something that I had to do in “stages.” That too, caused me a lot of grief and pain. It wasn’t until I made a clean break with religion, in all of its forms, that I was able to find peace and contentment, and even joy in my life. That was the choice that I made a long time ago and I’ve never looked back since.

My life is full of strife, conflict, worry, and doubt, just like anyone else’s. Taking religion out of the equation has made my life better for me in the long run. Like I said, I have no regrets, except that I wish I had made the clean break sooner rather than later.

Find whatever it is that works for you and choose that. If it doesn’t, discard it and move on to something else. My only suggestion would be is that if whatever it is isn’t working, stop trying to make it work and make a clean break from it and start anew.

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New Years 2020

Rob Says2 Comments

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Happy New Year everyone, here we are not only a new year, but a new decade. Where are coming from? Where are we going? More specifically, where did I come from and where am I going?

2019 was a fantastic year for the most part for me. In that time I got to:

Be a part of Masculine Geek.

Be a part of Red Evening.

Meet a whole bunch of great Men online.

Meet a bunch of great Men in person, and some of them live close by.

Meet up with Vince, TJ, and Aaron Clarey during the Masculine Geek Village By The Sea.

Meet some great Men during the Village By The Sea.

Grow on all of my social media platforms.

Date and relate with a bunch of fantastic women.

Push myself to put out more content than I did in 2018.

I’m very satisfied with what I have accomplished in 2019. I’m not done yet, not by a long shot. Some of the plans I have for 2020 include:

Being a part of Masculine Geek taking Italy By Storm (my name for it.)

Doing a show called Let ‘Em Burn with Nick August and Rob.

Meeting even more people in real life and this includes a trip to Houston, Texas. Why Houston? Why not? Many of the people that I have met online live either in Houston or nearby, so that would be a great opportunity to meet them all, if possible. Besides, I do have a thing for Texas. Say what you will about soy infiltrating it, Texas is still a pretty great state.

I want to take a trip up North beyond the Wall and visit with people I’ve met that live in Canada.

Will I be able to make all of this happen? I don’t know. Funds and time are at a premium for me, but I’m going to do what I can.

Of course I plan to keep on keeping on with Masculine Geek, Red Evening, and putting out my own content. This is my legacy as far as I’m concerned. This is my mission.

What else is 2020 going to bring? I don’t know for sure, other than I want Men and women both to understand something:

We all ultimately have to bow down or bend the knee to something. Whether you bow down to a god or the State, you are bowing down and bending the knee. I know that even I bend the knee on some level. I pay my taxes, I go to court when I have to, and I pay my bills. So yes, even I have to bend the knee. Honestly it bugs the shit out of me to a large degree, but it is what it is. I’m just finding ways to minimize how much bowing I have to do and for how long I need to be on my knee.

I want to point out to anyone that stumbles across my work that you are bowing down to one system or another. Maybe even more than one system. Realize this now. How many systems or people do you bend the knee to? Why do you do it?

Everybody has a system or an idea that they want to pitch and sell to you. They want your time, your money, and in their own way, they want you to bend the knee to them.

All religions do this. The State does this. Anyone telling you otherwise is lying to you. Even I’m doing it to you right now as you read this. I’m wanting you to NOT bend the knee to me, but to only bend it for yourself, when it benefits you. Stay sharp, stay alert. Stay focused. Use your critical thinking skills. Realize that damn near everyone “out there” has an agenda.

These agendas may not be “negative” per se, but they are agendas nonetheless. The question is, does their agenda benefit you? If so, great. If not, why should you bend the knee to it? Again, what’s in it for you?

I got pitched an agenda a few days before New Year’s on Twitter. I was told that there was a solution to our modern problems. Would I support it? I asked, “What’s in it for me?”

You want me to kiss a new ring, which is really the old ring. You want me to swear loyalty and fealty to your “new way” which in the end, is just the old way.

“We will get rid of divorce,” they said.

“Okay, what else?”

“You can’t have it both ways,” they said.

“I understand what you are saying, but what is in it for me?”

“We’ll get rid of the drag-queen show in schools,” they said.

“That is irrelevant to me, for I have no children of my own, and I don’t care about your children.” I said. “Again, what is in it for me? Here is a serious question for you, can I have multiple wives?”

“No. Monogamy is what we are offering.”

“Then you have nothing to offer me, for I already have multiple women in my life who understand that I am non-exclusive and non-monogamous. Why would I choose just one when I can have many?”

The new crown is the old crown, without even a new veneer. Religion has nothing new to offer me. No new answers, no actionable solutions, just more bend the knee. Thank you, but I’ll pass.

I may never totally leave the plantation, because honestly there is nowhere to go, but I can minimize what the plantation takes from me. I encourage you to do the same.

If you want “real change” in the world around you, it begins with you, of course. Then you have to change the laws and the State, which is the One True God. All religions bow before the One True God in the West. All else is live action roleplaying. Keep that in mind when those that would have you join their cause, or buy their course,  or join their digital online fort start preaching “patriarchy” or anything else. The only real Patriarch in the West is the One True God, the State. If you are a Man in the West, the One True God does not care for you or about you except as a tax base.

Stay alert, stay sharp, and stay focused. Ask, “What’s in it for me?” You may have to bend the knee, but you will be the one to get to decide when and where you do, and for how long you do it.

Stop looking for answers from guru’s who are LARPing. They want you to stay stuck where you are so that you can keep paying them for promises they cannot and will not keep and for results that may not matter at the end of the day.

Decide for yourself what it is that you want in this world that you inhabit. Do your own investigations and your own research. Take your time looking into whatever it is that you are interested in. Don’t fall for the Fear of Missing Out and don’t fall for false time constraints. That sale will happen again, I promise you, and that “limited seating/limited availability” is just another lie. There will always be another seat for you at their table so long as you have the money to sit. The question I ask you to consider though is, “Is their table worth sitting at?”

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Morality

Rob Says6 Comments

belief bible book business

I’ve unfollowed a handful of people on Twitter lately. Many of these guys I’ve followed for years. The two main reasons that I’ve stopped following them is part of the same thing really. Morality.

Older guys telling younger guys to “man up.” Older guys telling younger guys, “how it was back in the good old days.” When I say older guys, some of them are older than me, some are my age, and a couple are a few years younger than me. Don’t even get me started on the young guys who are preaching morality. All I can say to them is, “I appreciate what you are trying to do, I’ll give you credit for the effort, now sit down.” Not to sound condescending to these up and coming young men, but guys, the world hasn’t even begun to fuck with you yet. You have no idea. So sit down and close your mouths.

A lot of the guys that I’ve unfollowed are preaching their version of morality. Or what they learned in sunday school when they were kids. Nothing wrong with religion. If Jesus helps you be a better person, I’m all for it. If Jesus doesn’t do it for you, but Allah does, again, I’m all for it for you. But it isn’t for me.

When I say it isn’t for me, I mean all religions. I was raised under a certain religion from a tiny boy until about the age of 12 or so when I decided that that particular faith wasn’t for me. Through many years I’ve looked into a variety of religions and none of them fit me. I’ve gone down many rabbit holes of religion looking for answers only to find those rabbit holes either dead ended, or just kept spiralling around like a maze. I finally got to a place where I realized for me, that the religion rabbit hole doesn’t contain the answers that I have been looking for, and never did. Since that time, I’ve stopped looking for answers via religion.

One thing I’ve come to realize though is this, if you need religion to be moral, you’ve got problems. Big ones. If you need a book or scripture to tell you how to lead a moral life, if you can’t figure that out for yourself, you really have problems.

Morality is such a slippery thing in a lot of ways. When I grew up in the faith that I did, God and Jesus were perfect, we weren’t and aren’t. But man, you would be guilted and shamed for not doing everything in your power to be that perfection. Nothing you could do was good enough. You couldn’t pray enough. You couldn’t ask for forgiveness enough. And while God was a loving God, and was all-knowing and all-forgiving, somehow God just wouldn’t forgive you for that one little thing that you did that one time. God was all loving and a judgmental bastard at the same time. Now I realize that it wasn’t the religion itself per-se that was the problem, it was the “flock” or the “congregration.”

Still, religion is just not for me. You do you baby, and I’ll do me.

One of the things that I realized that helped me decide if I wanted to continue following these particular individuals on Twitter was the fact that they are preaching an outdated gospel. The times that they want to get back to are long dead and gone. Honestly I don’t think those time periods ever existed, I think what they are saying is mostly wishful thinking and delusional fantasy.

“Getting back to God” isn’t going to “save the west.” That ship has sailed. Religion has been compromised. The United States may have been founded under Christianity, but it won’t be saved by it. The only messiah that is going to save you is yourself. Stop looking to other’s to save you. They won’t. Stop wishing for “the good old days.” Those days are long gone or more likely never existed. We don’t live in a Normal Rockwell painting and we never have and we never will. Stop looking to the sky for your answers, they aren’t there. They are inside of you. You know what you need to do, so do it.

I’ve always been more interested in what IS than what OUGHT to be. I may not always like what I see, but I would rather deal with what is. Reality just is. It doesn’t care about you. It doesn’t care about me. It’s completely indifferent to you and me. It’s not benign nor is it malevolent. It’s like gravity. Gravity just is. It exists but is completely indifferent to us. You can rail against it when you fall down and tell it, “that’s not how it’s supposed to be!” But it won’t change anything. Gravity will do its thing to you again when you fall down. Might as well get used to that idea and maybe work on ways to not fall down so much.

I have my own moral code, just as I’m sure you have yours. I’m not going to tell you how to live, and I probably won’t judge you for the things that you do. I may not do things the way that you do, and that’s okay. Doing things my way doesn’t make me any less moral than you. At least in my book.

So yeah, I unfollowed a few dudes. I got tired of hearing guilt and shaming tactics that I heard almost 40 years ago. I got tired of hearing about “the good old days.” I got tired of hearing about things that amount to wishful thinking, platitudes, and living in a world that isn’t the world that I occupy. I got tired of hearing about how things ought to be instead of hearing about how things are.

Jack Donovan talked about being good at being a Man, and being a good Man. There is a difference between the two. Being a good Man is a moralistic perspective, while being good at being a Man, well, sometimes you do what you got to do to get things done, and sometimes those things can be immoral, or at least amoral.

In a perfect world, I think it would be best to be both, to be good at being a Man and a good Man. But when the shit hits the fan, being a good Man goes out the window and becomes irrelevant if and when the intruder is standing in front of you with a gun in his hand. You could be a good Man, but a dead Man. I know which one I would choose given that situation.

The issue of morality has always been a pressure point for me. That’s because everybody has their idea of what is moral, and they always stand on the side of being right when it comes to morality. What is right for you may not in fact be right for me. In fact, I would rather find something that “works” and gets me results than worry about being “right.”

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