This post is part of a series covering our first summer group-read book, BRONZE AGE MINDSET. For the next month, I'll be reading Bronze Age Mindset, and dissecting what I find interesting. Feel free to make your own posts, if anything I missed strikes you as interesting! For this post, we'll be looking at Part One and talking about the cult of self-improvement.

This series should not only be us dissecting the dense and esoteric aspects of BAP, but also interacting and responding to what we see- the English teacher in me wants to remind you all, this is how we should read everything! As such, this post will be part one of my interactions from a quote that struck me from Part One of BAP:

"It's in this world and almost only in this world today that you can start to polish the claws nature gave you, assuming it gave you any." (33)

The first place my mind went after reading this is our very subreddit, "The Red Pill," that I can truthfully say, without a hint of hyperbole, that my life would not be the same had I not found it- quite randomly- in the spring of 2013. That said, my margin note next to this underlined quote reads: "the cult of self-improvement." Let's look at the popularity of self-help, or self-improvement, which some have tried to rebrand as the less losery sounding "self-development," from both angles.

As a nerd, I was first attracted to TRP for all the theory talk. I was already lifting, and decent enough with girls, but felt alone with how I perceived the world- losing friends by the day, making observations on Facebook (don't do this), I felt like i genuinely had esoteric knowledge, like some kind of modern-day prophet (sitting on my throne, in front of my computer) seeing things that went unseen! Things hiding in plain sight! Finding TRP finally made me feel like I wasn't going through some so smart I've become insane kind of scenario- and before I knew any better, in that awful between time, I started linking my (remaining) Facebook friends to articles I found off of TRP (really don't do this).

But no one is snorting a line of the greatest drug in the world and rolling up the bag of potato chips and putting them away for the night. Before I knew it, even if I was already damn good at talking to girls, I was on-to "game advice." I was watching RSD videos. I was reading Roosh. I was reading Rollo. I was amping my lifting game. I began to be conscious of using my free more wisely- almost to the minute. I only wanted to take part in activities that would yield value, not consumption. I am not being disparaging about any of the above- on its face, these are all good things.

Maybe in a different time, in a different place, things would have been different- but I can only speak to here and now.

Something funny would happen, as I became sharper with all things- better shape, better game, better overall package- my results would not coincide in a 1:1 basis with these improvements. I became obsessed with understanding why.

Ironic that, what I came to know as the sexual marketplace- the gap between men and women would widen at a higher-rate than I was capable of improving. When I found the manosphere, it was said that 80% of women fuck the top 20% of men- and seven years later, it feels closer to the top 10%. Very tangible and concrete reasons for this, of course- the general acceptance of online dating apps, specifically online hook-up apps, and the stigma surrounding promiscuity all but extinguished for women under forty. We'll talk about the wall in part two- but if you think women in their forties aren't getting pounded out by mid-twenties Chads, well, welcome to the modern world.

So, self-improvement is a chicken-and-egg issue. Are we spending all of our time improving to dominate the market, or are we boxed in constant improving, value building, and glass-chewing discipline to chase diminishing returns? Yes, we can take a step back and say: IF YOU'RE CHASING WOMEN, YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG. And there's certainly truth in that- I would be doing all the same things at this point, at forty-years-old, whether I was getting laid or not... but let's also be real here, we're here because we want to be successful in an increasingly aggressive sexual marketplace.

My cigarette smoking grandfather escaped Belarus after getting in a bit of trouble with whatever their version of the mafia was, killing the man who was sent to kill him, and catching a boat to America- where he paid our version of the mafia for his papers, keeping the long and very foreign last name I am blessed with (first name given after him too). He had two children, and many girlfriends- not something I'm necessarily glorifying, but it is what it is. He did not spend all of his time self-improving. I doubt he ever set foot inside a gym.

Is it wrong to spend all of your time improving? You're smarter, fitter, and cooler than your Grandpa- yet he likely found a higher return and degree of satisfaction than you. I don't have an answer for you- but it's interesting to think: are you improving because you want to, or are you improving because you have to?

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