So I think one one thing we can all agree on is that the modern world has set up with a series of trapdoors for men.
Especially throughout our younger years, (15-35) we will all have ample opportunity to step into these traps and send our live in a negative trajectory for years to come.
So what are these traps? Knowledge is power so the younger you know this information the better chance you’ll have at avoiding the traps society has laid out for you.
Don’t watch porn.
Pornography has been a vice available to the average person in some form or another ever since printing photographs was normalized.
However, things really took off and this problem accelerated to unprecedented heights when the internet allowed pornography to be beamed into everyone’s phone within 5 seconds of opening an internet browser.
Whatever you want to see you can get unlimited of it on the modern internet and for some this will lead to gorging on an endless stream of mind rotting content showing people you’ll never meet embarrassing themselves & selling their souls.
This can lead to a variety of negative outcomes such as ED, inability to mentally or physically be with a real partner, increased likelihood of cheating, or morphed and twisted sexual desires.
Even if you think you have it under control and you only occasionally watch porn my advice would be to stop altogether in order to better position yourself to reach your maximum potential.
Sportsball.
I have to imagine that spectator sports was always around in some form or another.
However, much like the corporate holiday structure, there is currently a corporatized year long cycle of sports, (primarily baseball, football, basketball in America) that has been meticulously set up in order to soak up as many hours of you conscious attention as possible.
Each season ends as the next begins & the minimal overlap allows a single fan to be able to invest themselves in all the major sports without ever stepping away from mentally investing in a team. An infinite loop is created
It isn’t just spending time watching the sports either, it’s the ritual of eating wings and drinking beer while the sportsball is on TV. This costs in a trifecta of time, money, and health.
You’re essentially gambling with the three resources listed above, it isn’t a casino type of gambling though, sports viewers are gambling a strong emotional investment in a group of grown men that they will never know, who are playing a game they have no control over the outcome of, all the while the viewer wears the name of one of these strangers on his back.
This is referring specifically to sports as a corporation within the US, I think the Olympics is a really cool event but each version of the olympics only comes around once every four years so there isn’t the same potential to get sucked into an endless loop as a viewer. As far as sports at a more local level, I think at a local level sports can serve a community building function and give young men a place to develop teamwork skills & gain other valuable experiences.
At least the average father who is involved/spectating at his child’s sports games actually has a son that is on the field and because of that has a way to positively influence the outcome of the game.
Don’t get obsessed with nostalgia/reminiscing on childhood
Imagine here, a 30 year old, “man” that is surrounded by Pop Figures of various fictional characters.
Having a few collectables isn’t bad but pathologically thinking about the better days of the past will prevent you from ever looking towards the future and putting yourself in a growth mindset where you can push yourself forward in uncomfortable ways.
Credentials
Obviously hierarchy will always exist & being the, “boss” or “sheriff” will always be the the desired position for many. This section is not about that.
I think that with the rise in the corporate system in the last 100 years many young men have a distorted compass with what real respect looks like.
The primary reason that I really look up to someone isn’t if they have a PhD, or if they’re at the highest level of a corporation but it’s how they carry themselves.
When I see a man that has a certain type of honor and confidence in himself I gravitate to and respect that much more than if he’s the third highest CEO at a Fortune 10 company.
I worked this real life experience into a previous short fiction story I wrote for this site but I met the type of honorable grown man I described above when our plumbing was clogged at my house and we needed someone to fix the drainage system.
He spoke a certain type of way and carried himself a certain way & after talking to him while he was working I figured out he has an investment portfolio/investment properties that total in over 1 million in net value. Money isn’t everything, but this was still impressive.
He didn’t go out of his way to offer this information up, it came up naturally due to me asking him various questions about his career/life over the course of a 45 min plumbing job.
My point is, on paper, he had no particular credentials that would wow your average corporate executive or doctor but carried himself in an honorable way.
I think that the public education system as well as the corporate system it feeds into can promote a neuritic search for credentials and be prohibitive for learning how or where to develop a real sense of honor.
What things traditionally showed a man was a person to be respected?
I had a good friend of mine tell me about how in the past, a man’s horse was a sign of what he was like.
How the horse was trained, how it was groomed, it’s personality, and how healthy it was.
I think that expanding on this idea, a man’s family says a lot about who they are. There’s no better comparison to look at than comparing Donald Trump and Joe Biden’s Children.
Aside from that, you can look at a man’s manners, their health, and their respect for those around them.
Topics that aren’t discussed because they’re so obviously bad it should go without saying
Going to strip clubs
Cheating on your significant other
Having premarital sex
Gambling a significant amount of your money
Being lazy
I’m not saying that I haven’t succumbed to any of these temptations. This isn’t a class and I’m not writing this as a person whose elevated above you. If I jogged your mind, put yourself in the mentality that I’m a brutally honest friend not a collage professor lecturing you.
-Kyle
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