Summary: Men are easily manipulated using their pride, their sense of duty and honor, their standards, and their idea of being true to themselves. Many things that gain us absolutely nothing, and even create consequences for us, might still feel good because we’ve been conditioned to feel a sense of pride or a sense of duty. Embracing humility, dropping the arrogance, recognizing that we don’t decide what is important or what has value, and that we live and die by the judgement of others stings, but helps us reap real rewards for our actions instead of false pride.


It’s easy for a man, or for anybody really, to get caught up in the way things are “supposed” to be. A lot of us grew up believing that if we worked hard, got a higher education, got a decent job, a decent place to live, and were generally friendly and respectful to women, we’d eventually meet somebody in passing who would like us for our accomplishments and our kind, respectful nature, date us, marry us, have a family with us, and live happily ever after with us. We then found ourselves pining after seemingly great women who accepted our kindness, but kept us at arms length while having casual sex with far less kind and respectful men, and we learned that things don’t always work the way they’re supposed to.

Women face similar types of issues and have their own ideas of how things are supposed to be, that often aren’t how things really work. Not the same issues, of course, but similar types of issues.

Some men notice the way the world is working, feel the way the world is changing, and work to learn the new system and try to succeed at it. Not all of these men end up succeeding, but some do. And the others at least make the effort and recognize what’s going on and how and why they’re failing.

But some men shove their fingers in their ears, squint their eyes tightly closed, and shout “LA LA LA” while doubling down their efforts to excel under their own interpretation of the way the world ought to work. And they continue to fail. But strangely, they pride themselves in this failure. They declare that it is somehow meaningful to be true to themselves, to hold themselves, women, society, and the world to certain standards, and to act the way they feel that they are supposed to regardless of the consequences. Essentially, they have given themselves a self-imposed duty to adhere to a certain way of life, then they bask in the feelings of pride that come from performing what they perceive to be their duty.

Men are especially vulnerable to this form of mental masturbation. Pride. A sense of duty. This idea that being true to something we believe in, even when this inflicts consequences upon us and gains us nothing, has some kind of inherent value. In much the same way that guys like us used to think that being a decent, employed, friendly guy who liked a girl and wanted to date her had some kind of inherent value, many men think that adhering to some kind of inner sense of standards or duty is valuable for its own sake, even when it’s holding them back and getting them nothing.

After all, a man will enlist in the armed forces, suffer through grueling training and unpleasant living conditions, get deployed thousands of miles from home, and fight and die for his country – and he will feel a sense of pride, honor, and duty for doing so. Even though his country’s government has no idea who he is and doesn’t give a shit about him, and even though his country’s people think that only dumbass losers who can’t succeed at life join the armed forces. He doesn’t care. He feels a sense of pride and duty. Men will sacrifice their lives to feel that sense of pride, honor, and duty inside their minds, even though it gains them absolutely nothing except that personal feel-good sensation. Even when it costs them everything and nobody cares but them. Even when other people actively think bad things about them.

Sadly, this isn’t so different from your average video game addict who feels a sense of accomplishment when he plays a video game well. He’s doing something that brings him joy and that inner sense of feeling good, but he’s not actually gaining anything. He’s just sacrificing his time growing fat and lazy, and other people think he’s a loser.

Men who double down on their ideas about how love, sex, and relationships are supposed to work are a bit like these two examples. They are burdened by a sense of false pride. A sense of honor, duty, feel-good-ness about being true to themselves, or whatever you want to call it. They feel an inner sense of value or importance when they do something that nobody else cares about or finds valuable in the slightest. In fact, other people often dislike how these men behave, and these men suffer the consequences of practicing unsuccessful behaviors, but they grin and feel a sense of pride for sticking to it anyway.

Men are arrogant. They believe that inside their minds, they, and only they, determine what is truly important. If women won’t date or fuck them, it’s women’s fault for not realizing what’s truly important. If nobody wants to be their friend, it’s the other men’s fault for being pussies who don’t get it. If nobody wants to hire or promote them, it’s society’s fault for keeping good men down.

One of the more difficult truths for a man to accept is that you are not important. The things that are important and valuable to you are not important. You thinking that something is important doesn’t make it important. You aren’t in control of the world. The world is in control of you. You don’t decide what’s important – other people decide what’s important.

If what you are doing is not working – nobody is having sex with you or being your friend or giving you money – then what you are doing is not valuable or important, no matter how much you want it to be. You don’t get to decide what’s valuable. The rest of the world decides what’s valuable by rewarding you or inflicting consequences upon you based on what you do.

If something you are doing is not working, it doesn’t matter how ingrained into you and how big a piece of you that you think this thing is. Cut it out and find something that works. Things that work and bring you success and the things you want are valuable. Things that don’t work or that bring you consequences are value-less.

Your sense of pride, your sense of honor, your sense of duty, the idea that you need to hold yourself to certain standards or hold women or society to certain standards – these are tools the rest of the world can use to manipulate you into doing things that benefit others while burdening you with consequences. You’ll feel good about what you’re doing – a tiny little sense of pride – while nobody likes you, fucks you, or pays you.