Editor’s Note: We are running this series from Didact, but you would do well to make Didactmind a regular read.
First, MANY thanks, brothers, to all of you who read my posts yesterday and subscribed to the site. I met my goal of reaching 12 subscribers in less than 24 hours. My thanks also to those who wrote in to either of my email addresses with full-throated messages of support and agreement. I am greatly heartened to see my readers responding to my call for a renewed focus on the things that make us men.
Now, let us remind ourselves of what we face. The world hates us and wants to see us destroyed. Everything that we believe in is mocked and derided and spat upon. We are beset by enemies on every side and those enemies are fierce, fearsome, and terrible indeed.
To this I say: We’ve got them right where we want them.
Seriously, when you’re surrounded by the enemy, there are really only two rational responses. The first is to surrender, give up, give in, and allow yourself to be enslaved. The second is to fight on regardless. In the second case, what, exactly, have you got to lose?
So… how do you start fighting back? That, after all, is the point of sites like this one – to give you the tools to fight back AND WIN. Here I will break it down for you in five steps. (My thanks to reader weka for providing the basic inspiration for this list, by the way – he’s a righteous dude in his 60s who maintains his own blog right here.)
It is important to understand that LITERALLY NOTHING that I am going to write is in any way new. Very little in this world is genuinely new. What I offer you is instead simple battle-tested wisdom.
So how do we get started? Well:
1. Stop Drinking Poison
Are you spending your evenings watching network TV or cable? Or wasting your time watching sportzball? Or giving your money to streaming companies like Netherflix?
STOP THAT SHIT RIGHT NOW.
Turn off the damn TV. Stake the vampire right through its foul necrotic heart. You don’t need what they’re selling. Send them that message in the clearest terms possible.
I am well aware that this is harder than it sounds. Streaming services, like sugar and cocaine, are addictive – they are designed to be. Netflix, in particular, has some genuinely great content mixed in with all of the filth.
In fact, there is more good content on Netflix than filth, at least right now. I can go to Netflix where I am right now and watch great movies like Gladiator, The Last Samurai, Troy, the Indiana Jones trilogy, and the Mission: Impossible series. There is even some really good Netflix-original content like The Frankenstein Chronicles starring Sean Bean.
My answer to that is really simple: putting a drop of wine into mud does not improve the mud, but putting a drop of mud in wine ruins the wine.
Furthermore, you may well have family members who like Netflix content and want to stay with it. I have faced that situation too. This pressure is not easy to resist – but you must resist it nonetheless.
If you cannot cut off your cable or streaming services now, then do everything you can to move to that point. Meanwhile, start downvoting the filth. Putting thumbs down on movies and shows on Netherflix will force the algorithm to stop displaying that nonsense. Vote down everything that is genuinely degenerate, like the new Jim Parsons show, The Boys in the Band, or The Old Guard which stars an openly gay interracial couple and pretends that women can fight just as well as men.
2. Understand What Is Happening
It will take you a few days to a couple of weeks to free yourself from the mental “fog” of the poison being pumped into your brain. Once this happens, your head will clear up and you will be able to understand one very critical fact.
The critical point that you must understand is that the world around you has gone mad for a reason. The collapsing and decaying society that you live in did not get to this point through mere randomness. What you see is deliberate, designed, orchestrated.
You are being demoralised on purpose. The Great Enemy is doing this specifically to make you lose hope.
Why?
Because hopeless people are easy to control. And once you understand that evil in this world is controlled by a particular source and persona, then you can understand how to set yourself against it.
3. Focus on the Good, Beautiful, and True
Now, there are a number of different ways to go about setting one’s face against evil. Non-Christians will argue that the best way to do this is through philosophy, and they are mostly correct.
The philosophies that work are the ones that are DIRECTED toward all that is Good, Beautiful, and True. Stoicism is one of these philosophies. Christianity is another. These philosophies preach self-restraint, self-knowledge, and self-belief. They are difficult, unyielding, and personal.
The philosophies that do not work are usually the ones that promise easy solutions to difficult problems. Transcendental meditation requires you to open your mind to the world without focus or discipline. This is extraordinarily dangerous, because by definition, if you open your mind up, then inevitably, something will find its way in. Islam is another easy solution – becoming a Muslim is very easy, you just have to recite the shahada and you achieve salvation through works, not faith or self-discipline.
You need to focus on what is good, what is evil, and figure out how to discern between the two. It is NOT easy. You were given free will to figure this out, and you will make mistakes.
If you are a Christian, read the Bible every day (especially the New Testament), create a daily prayer rule, and stick to it. Set aside five minutes a day – that is all it takes – to pray to God. Focus your mind on what God wants you to do – ask Him, and He will tell you, one way or another.
If you are not a Christian, then focus on a virtuous philosophy that points you to what is true and teaches self-restraint. I argue that this will inevitably and eventually point you to Jesus and God, because they are TRUTH. You may well disagree. That’s fine. As long as you seek the truth, and are willing to take your lumps to find it, then you’ll get there eventually.
4. Strengthen Your Body
As your mind strengthens itself by focusing on what is True, your body must follow suit. A strong mind requires a strong body. The counterexamples to this, such as Prof. Stephen Hawking, are very few and far between – and it so happens that Prof. Hawking’s logic wasn’t exactly flawless quite a lot of the time.
Start a workout program. Which one? I don’t care – as long as it’s NOT CrossShit. THEY ALL WORK, as long as they focus on the same basic principles. All you need are two things:
- Progressive overloading – more reps or more weight, or both, every single workout;
- Predictable repetition – get your ass to the gym no matter HOW bad you feel;
That is literally all there is to it. Show up and add weight (or do more reps). That is literally all there is to it. Don’t waste time trying to find “the perfect” program. It doesn’t exist. Find whatever you like that obeys these basic principles, and then DO IT.
If you like martial arts, then take up an challenging one like judo, muay thai, or Krav Maga or BJJ. Men like me, who love lifting heavy things, can start with powerlifting. I personally hate bodyweight workouts, but I do them when I have to.
Conclusion: No One Will Save You
Above all, you need to understand one thing:
You are surrounded by enemies and NO ONE is going to come and rescue you, if YOU don’t do something. They can’t. There are forces out there which are just waiting to ride to your rescue – the spiritual cavalry is right over that hill and is practically BEGGING you to call upon them.
But you have to take that first step. You MUST put down the remote and walk away from the poison, embrace self-discipline, orient yourself toward the truth, and build up your strength.
In the coming days, I will do my best to expand upon these points and deepen them and lead you through the thicket of confusion to get to the good stuff. And make no mistake, there is A LOT of nonsense and bullshit out there. My job is to apply my own experience and very hard-won experience and MISERABLE personal failures to show you what not to do, and what works.
I will leave you with that thought for today. Meanwhile, if you want to understand what I have written above in auditory and visual form, I highly recommend this excellent video that our good friend The Male Brain sent me a few months ago.
This is a video lecture delivered by Richard Grannon a couple of years ago at the 21 Convention. Dawn sent it to me at a time when i really needed it, and it helped me out a lot. Richard never mentions Christianity and religion here, but his basic points are completely compatible with a walk with Christ:
