Advice for Young Men

The job of a man is to interact with the world and, in some combination, understand, maintain, or improve it. Whatever your goals, the conduits between you and them are skills. Thus, every man should have as many skills as possible. That way, he has a multitude of methods by which to achieve his goals. This maximises his chances of succeeding and also the quality of his success.

In short: as a man, you should want to be as capable as possible.

You probably knew this already. At some level, you know that you should be capable, and you have the urge to be capable, and it burns you when you are not capable. Even though many social pressures are telling you not to care about this, you do. Lacking a particular skill might be merely inconvenient, but lacking general capability is humiliating. You feel less of a man, more dependent on others and more needy of their approval, and more panicky about the future.

Women don’t really understand this. For them, skills are useful, sometimes essential, but not a measure of them as people, so they cannot understand why somebody’s self-worth would depend on such things. As a result, your female teachers, your well-meaning mother, and the feminists on TV… tell you to be a good person, to be kind, to be comfortable with yourself, outgoing and open to new experiences, etc. They are giving advice that works for them - women.

As men, of course we want to be good, kind, comfortable with ourselves… but that feels dull and uninteresting. There is a sense of settling for the person you already are rather than becoming what you could potentially become. Intrinsic to maleness is a drive to overcome problems and defeat limits - in the external world eventually, but first the limits we feel within ourselves when we are young. The horizon that we must explore to learn where it leads is mirrored by the potential we feel in ourselves: perhaps we over-estimate it, perhaps we will never find its limit, but we are compelled to try, and we will be frustrated until we do.

We have an urge to grow and transform, and we know that it can only happen by toil, sacrifice and effort. Until there has been toil and sacrifice and pain and glory… there hasn’t really been anything.

The things which bring us toil, sacrifice, pain and glory are:

• becoming capable (by gathering practical skills and learning how to solve problems)

• becoming social (by gathering social skills and overcoming hurdles for the first time - getting that qualification, the awkward first date, moving to a new place, starting a new job, negotiating a promotion, etc.)

• becoming resilient (by overcoming adversity, problems, bad habits, and immature ways of thinking, etc.)

While I don’t think that a man’s self-worth should hinge on being capable, I think for most of us it will. It would be nice if you could have effortless faith in your worth as a human being, but realistically that will probably only materialise - and naturally - when you feel confident that you can deal with life. Until then, your worth is an unknown quantity, completely unproven, and you know it. Women need to present as friendly to the world, but men need to actually deal with the world. The very things whose pursuit gives us toil, sacrifice, pain and glory, are exactly the things we happen to need to navigate the world as men:

• practical skills

• social skills

• resilience

I will go through these individually.

Practical skills

Obviously, practical skills will differ from one man to the next. But there are some I believe beneficial for all men.

If I were starting out now, I would want the following practical skills, at the specified levels, by the age of 25:

• reading, writing and speaking (as high level as possible)
  Communication is one of the most essential skills in life. The more clearly and concisely you can do it (both written and verbal), the more you will be listened to, respected and taken seriously by other people. It is a great advantage over people who are needlessly inarticulate, which these days is just about everyone.

• basic arithmetic (adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing)

• good level of research skill
  Being able to find things out and learn by yourself makes you much more independent. It is very “icky” to see a grown man asking others for information before trying a simple Internet search himself; it shows an instinctual lack of agency, whether due to stupidity or laziness.

• creating a very simple webpage with some JavaScript functionality
  I recommend this because it is the easiest entrée into programming, which is a very useful skill to develop later on

• basic electronics (wiring a plug)

• basic carpentry (constructing a table, putting up a shelf)

• basic plumbing (fixing a cistern)

• basic tailoring (mending old clothes)

• basic level of reading music and playing piano or guitar

• competence in physical fighting
  If you don’t have this skill, you will be dependent for defence on men who do have it, you will be vulnerable and you will feel vulnerable which will affect your self-image, and you will be completely unable to protect a woman.

• budgeting

If you have all the above, I think you will be better equipped and more self-sufficient than the vast majority of 25 year-olds, and able to deal with just about any practical problem that you encounter in life.

You can tell that public education isn’t serious because it doesn’t mandate any of these skills, except the first two, and isn’t even good at instilling those.

In addition to the above, introduce yourself to random skills that you have no current use for - kayaking, archery, calligraphy, historical research, you name it. You will naturally know your area(s) of talent by what you find yourself being good at, or more likely, what you find yourself being drawn to. However, try to spread yourself as wide as possible. You have no idea what will turn out to be useful (or even necessary) later on. For that reason you should aim to gather the beginnings of as wide a range of skills as possible. Why do this early instead of waiting? Because, if you already have the beginnings of a skill, it will be much less intimidating and inconvenient to develop it further at a later date. Even if you are only vaguely acquainted with a skill, that is infinitely better than it being a complete unknown to you. So I advise to become a jack of all trades and delay mastery of any until after 25.

That takes care of practical skills. Unfortunately for you as a young man, it is also necessary to have social skills.

Social skills

To men, “social skills” can sound boring and feminine. It embarrasses us so we want to dismiss the matter. Fifty years ago it was probably possible for a man to get through life without developing great social skills, especially if his life was spent among the male working-class, but that world has gone now. Today you need social skills to navigate an increasingly feminised society, and also if you want to ascend the social ladder. At the higher levels, getting by is at least as much based on social agility as anything else.

If I were starting out now, I would want the following social skills by the age of 20:

• how to talk to other men

• how to approach and flirt with women

• an understanding that men and women really are fundamentally different

• knowing the reasons to end a relationship, and how to do it while causing the least hurt

• how to negotiate and assert myself

• how to respond to a man being disrespectful to me, mocking me in front of others, etc.

• how to accept/receive criticism

• the importance of not getting overly attached to friends or lovers

• the crucial importance of being willing to compromise (“don’t let perfect be the enemy of good”)

• realism over idealism (have feasible goals and never “just hope for the best”)

• the importance of identifying losers/parasites and cutting ties with them

Note that, while some of the practical skills can wait till age 25, I would want the social skills by age 20. This should underline the importance of being socially agile. Do not think, for a second, that you will succeed in the world by virtue of your talents, passions, commitment or reliability alone. You will need to be able to navigate the social minefield.

People tend to have extreme attitudes about socialising a young person, declaring either “it comes naturally” or “you need to consciously develop it”. The problem is that both of these statements are true, for different social skills. Yes, in all likelihood you will naturally learn certain things just by being in the company of other people: how to show polite interest in someone else, how to show gratitude, how to carry a conversation, when to abandon a line of humour, when and when not to be sarcastic, how much and how little to talk about yourself, etc. But other skills, namely those listed above, will probably not come naturally so you will need to consciously pursue them.

As for their importance… I think they were less important in the past, because social mores were so ubiquitous that they took care of a lot of things for you. Decency, honesty, common attitudes and goals - all of these helped to ensure that you would not be screwed over by others, and that your society was “on your wavelength” and would assist you. As a result, you didn’t need to worry about much beyond your own personal performance. If you were a good person and a hard worker, you would probably get by in life and even do well. It is crucial to realise: it simply is not like that now. And, where there are not social mores, you must have social skills.

Resilience

As a man, you want to be able to deal with adversity, conquer problems and difficulties, and make your mark on the world. There is a drama to all of that which is exciting. However, the mundane side of male strength is resilience. It is the day-to-day version. Though less glamorous than heroism, it is far more important.

You will inevitably run into situations throughout life that will hurt you and even break you. Neither is the end of the world, or of you - but only if you are resilient.

Why will you inevitably get hurt (or even broken) in life? Because you are a man. This means you will try to find your limits, and in so doing you might find them the hard way. Things you do in the pursuit of “becoming” might cost more than you anticipated. Endeavours you expected to be easy might turn out to be draining. A misfortune here or there might be devastating - and there is always some misfortune in life, a few unforeseeable events, a few wrong turns, a few miscalculations.

Again, none of these things need be the end of you. The antidote is resilience.

The key aspect of resilience is: after a fall, get back up. There are others but none as important as this. There are various reasons why you might not get back up after a fall:

• you are plagued with embarrassment at having failed (people saw and now they think badly of you)

• you are plagued with shame at having failed (other people were counting on you, or did a lot to help you, and you’ve let them down)

• defeatism / lack of confidence (“If I failed once, I’m bound to fail again”)

• obsessing over why you failed. This can lead to self-pity and analysis paralysis

• you worry you will not be able to handle failing again, that it will finish you off, so it’s better not to try

• you’re at the end of your rope - you needed a win, but you got a fail

• depression takes hold (chronic loss of energy, morale, confidence)

• you think other people are making you fail, and will continue doing so

• vengefulness, victim complex (obsessing over who made you fail)

Of these, only the final two are legitimate. But be careful, because it can be a delusion, a way to off-load the responsibility for your failure onto imagined oppressors. However, in the rare event that there really are people tripping you up or sabotaging you, even that is not a reason to stay down: you have to work out how to defeat them or circumvent them.

Other tips for developing resilience:

• do what you are afraid to do

• identify the things you are good at. These might be crucial for your morale - every guy wants to know he can do at least something

• learn the right (eg. useful and true) lessons from a bad experience, not the wrong lessons (eg. fatalism, self-pity, absolutism)

• set yourself up to have experiences that will teach you good lessons (eg. success rather than failure)

• give yourself “wins” - things to accomplish that you know you can achieve. This is useful for morale during low periods. If you are depressed, put up that shelf you’ve been delaying putting up

• save up money. Financial strength helps with psychological strength

Overall, resilience is the key psychological difference between a boy and a man. The boy needs help from outside; the man can solve his problems and heal his wounds by himself.

Miscellaneous advice

Other life lessons, warnings or pearls of wisdom I would offer:

• prioritise and re-prioritise, daily

• maintain a to-do list. I use a private Telegram channel for this, so that I can update it at any time and no matter where I am

• when facing a complex problem or dilemma, write it all down so that the various factors are in front of you and can be handled. (I say “write” but I use Windows Notepad for this.) It’s a very useful technique

• your emotions are not important in and of themselves. They are important in that they indicate what works or doesn’t work for you. Do not dwell on them, but try to understand what causes them, and use that knowledge productively

• other people’s opinions simply don’t matter very much

• you matter to other people much less than you think, so don’t worry about them noticing some flaw in you - they don’t care and will have forgotten about it within 5 minutes

• if you can get something done now, just do it now

• try to rely on other people as little as possible. Usually, you’ll get the thing done better and faster yourself anyway

• never waste time. Anything which costs you - and everything costs you time - should also benefit you.

• relaxation is a necessity and therefore not a waste of time. Find the things that help you to relax. This knowledge will come in handy some day

• appetites grow with the feeding. Do not pursue habits or interests that are bad for you

• most vices are acceptable in moderation, but you really do need to moderate. I would recommend less than an hour a day of, for example, video gaming or TV

• never get into debt and don’t have credit cards. If you do, pay it off as soon as possible and never do it again

• never be ashamed to ask older men for advice. Before the age of 30, assume that you don’t really know what you’re doing, because you probably don’t

• asking for advice and even help is one thing, but if you don’t try, other men will develop contempt for you

• when doing a job, it’s the result that matters. Don’t get hung up on irrelevancies

• buy second-hand whenever possible (and it usually is)

• don’t buy things you won’t use (you’re not a woman)

• people who tell you not to try to better yourself, or that you should remain in the station you were born into, should probably be cut out of your life

• nobody else can fix your life for you. You are the master of your ship, and you can (almost certainly) handle it, despite how intimidating it often seems when you are young. You are much more resilient than you currently know.

Conclusion

I think the path of the young man should be to become as independent and as useful to other people, but as un-needy of their approval, as possible.

Of course you will fall short of that ideal. No matter how hard you try, how resourceful you are and how much you “watch yourself”, you will still have a few vulnerabilities, insecurities, weaknesses and so on that are unique to you and not overcome-able. But that is no excuse not to try. Let those flaws testify, not to how much you couldn’t overcome, but how much you did overcome.

In life, the easiest thing is to be a loser. You can do it simply by not trying. You can also justify being a loser, though that takes a little more work. In our age, the culture specifically guides young men into becoming losers - disrespected by their peers, despised by their women, exploited by the powerful, replaced by the foreign, and forgotten by their descendants (if they even have any, a goal which is discouraged and obstructed).

But in the end, you are here in the world, and despite all the shittiness of today’s society, you are still here, stuck here, so what are you going to do? You will probably not be able to fix the world, but you can still have a good life. Whether you believe in God, or Nature, or Gaia or Odin or just sheer luck… for whatever reason, you have acquired existence, and this is the only life you will ever have. Make of it what you can.

Become capable. Become social. Become resilient. Become.