I Me Mine

Little girl, it’s a great big world

But there’s only one of me.

–Christopher Guest, Michael McKeon, Rob Reiner, Harry Shearer, Tonight I’m Gonna Rock You Tonight

I’ve recently been briefly but intensely reminded of what it’s like to have the power of an Alpha male.  Doing nothing wrong, only using those aspects of Game that I have to work not to use, I got a woman utterly obsessed with me.  Fortunately I extricated myself from the obsession (I think) with merely hateful glares instead of tears.  Still, it was awkward.  More on that later.  Maybe.

Neither beta males nor females can quite understand what it’s like to have this effect on a woman, on multiple women.  To know that your offhand texts into which you put no thought can make or break somebody’s week, to see the scowls of one woman as you casually flirt with another, to know you’re being a completely unreasonable ass who should get kicked to the curb but gets rewarded instead   All of this can have a uniquely intoxicating effect, and it makes sense why so many men become addicted to it.

Of course, like other highs, it’s not particularly psychologically healthy if not kept in perspective.  It can feel great to know that you’re dominant in ways that other men can only dream of, but what matters is what you do with your power once you have it.  Power is a necessary means to an end, but if power itself is the end, it’s a drug.  If your quest for power is merely pursuant to your Mission, eventually you’ll find you have enough, and as you achieve your Mission you’ll feel relatively satisfied.  If you trick yourself into thinking you’re following your Mission just so you have an excuse to gain power, you worship the vacuum within which can never be fed.

Still, because we males are wired for a Mission, and power is usually necessary component of Mission fulfillment, we’re wired to want power.  This requires you have a sense of self worth, an ego, so that you do what it takes to get what’s yours.

But if your ego’s the reason you do what you do, your highs will be forever brief,  Fulfillment requires something more.

Against and Within

As I described in my last post:

You’re supposed to do that because you should, you’re not supposed to do that because you shouldn’t, and whether or not it benefits you is irrelevant.  Do it for the Greater Good.

Conservative Christians usually understand why such a system is disastrous economically, but that seems to be exactly how they want to run their churches.  It makes perfect sense to them how confiscatory tax rates discourage entrepreneurs from starting new businesses, but they can’t seem to fathom why families based on socialistic mutual submission would stop men from starting new families.

The reason the Greater Good system fails economically is that it needs to eliminate an essential component of human nature, our precious little egos.  Call them superfluous, selfish, evil, or just misguided, they aren’t going away.  Socialistic economic systems try to weed them out of us, and they merely enable the powerful to expand their egos at everybody else’s expense.

Free markets work better because they work with human nature instead of against it, they corral our desire to get rich and beat everybody else at something for the Greater Good.  To some, it’s ironic that ostensibly selfish economic systems tend to do a much better job at promoting collective prosperity, but that’s just because they measure what such systems actually accomplish against what they think their own systems could accomplish.  The ugly truth is that if you let people live for themselves, they’ll often do better by everybody else than if they spend their lives as Selfless do-gooders.

Yet as I’ve stated before, today’s Church promotes marriage with the same false premise, the idea that a man should surrender his own self-interest for the sake of a Greater Good, only the Greater Good they have in mind is the woman in his life Family instead of the State.  Not unlike how feminism both works against and within the Christian community to promote itself, socialism does the same through the doctrine of mutual submission and “man-up” sermonizing.  Feminists are more inclined to say the hell with men who won’t man up, but the femmis and the churchians work together to shame men into defying their own natural inclinations.

Alpha Says What?

Guilt has to be the primary selling point of the churchians because they’ve got nothing else.  Sex?  For Alphas without a strong moral sense, marriage will often only diminish his sex life, and the widespread availability of porn makes this selling point even less salient to the betas.  Stability?  When she can destroy your home and take away your kids at a whim?  Financial security?  Same thing.  Help with the housework?  Whether she’s inclined towards submission or not, her work hours will probably be just as long as yours (the transition to the two-earner family is one of feminism’s greatest accomplishments).  Being rooted?  What man wants to grow roots and get tied down for its own sake?

Instead, she’ll probably get fat, and it’ll be your fault for being selfish if you object (and probably your fault she got fat in the first place), any money you earn can be taken from you if somebody else’s emotions get off-kilter, your kids could easily end up in a new state, etc.

This makes a man feel like a tool, a means to an end, like he’s being exploited.  Occasionally, betas will submit to exploitation, but Alphas won’t.

I Me Mine

The question we rarely ask is what’s in it for him?

I believe I’m paraphrasing Roosh here, but what inspires us are the “three A’s”:  Adventure, Accomplishment, and Authority.

Alphas undoubtedly lead a more adventurous existence than betas, but even the betas sometimes have fun staying out all night on a Tuesday, taking a random road trip, etc.  As much as you might want to describe the freedom to drive to Daytona some weekend as immature, it has value, and if you want us to give it up, you’d better offer something in return.

And that something lies in the other two.

First, we want Authority.  My life.  My wife.  My family.  My house.  My truck.  My dog.  My beliefs. (and then, almost as if by magic)  My responsibility.

In earlier eras, men have braved Indian attacks, interminably long voyages across oceans to strange new lands, wild bands of outlaws, extreme cold, drought, and every other sort of extreme weather for the chance to be able to say that, to have a little house and spot for his family he could call his own.  Today, you can’t get a guy to wander into a Justice of the Peace and mumble a few words to get married because he can’t call it his own with any degree of certainty.

Often, if you give a beta the responsibilities and rights of manhood, he’ll respond by being just a bit more Alpha.  When it’s his call, he’s just a bit more likely to make a decision.  When it’s his wife (meaning her body is his), he’s just a bit more likely to treat his wife with the dominance she craves.  When they’re his kids (and he knows they’ll stay that way because his wife can’t just up and leave for Oklahoma), he’s more likely to take an interest in them.

And even the Alpha becomes more likely to do what the Church wants him to do.  Maybe he can’t have that cocktail waitress, but that tight little body waiting for him at home belongs to him, those little hands and strong little heartbeat want desperately to make him happy.  He doesn’t have to dominate, he simply gets to lead.

Which leads to greater success on the third “A”:  Achievement.  What if instead of increasing the burden on a man through incessant nagging, she decreases it by doing the dishes?  What if he returned from the combat he faces at work every day to a loving supporter instead of a spoiled harpy?  What if the thankless way his boss treats him gets countered every night by the gratitude of a loving wife?  At least in theory, wives can make men’s lives easier.  After all, how much closer would I be to achieving my mission if I didn’t have to scrub my own damn toilet?  (Answer:  A lot.)

It won’t work for everybody; some betas are born to be weak, some Alphas will never be satisfied with only one woman.  That doesn’t mean we should have thrown out the whole system, nor does it mean that we should try to get men to marry through what’s worst in them.*

Not Gonna Happen

Of course, wanting to go back to the Dark Ages means I’ll get called all sorts of awful names, and it has about as much chance of happening as a balanced Federal budget next year.  We are where we are, and every sitcom, most sermons, etc. oppose us.

I advocate spreading the word in whatever way possible, but in the short term the rest of them aren’t going to get it.

In today’s cultural and legal climate, every man should be hesitant to marry.  However, some men still want to.  They may be idealists, they may just get sick of playing the field.

Either way, he’s got his work cut out for him.

First, he must BE an Alpha.  It can’t be technique, it’s got to be internalized.  He can’t fake a Mission or still be his calibrating “cocky-funny”.  The behaviors of Game are the outward manifestation of internal male dominance.  You can learn the internals by mimicking the externals, but unless you’ve mastered both seeming like and being a man, you’re toast.

Second, he’s got to find a woman of impeccable character.  No matter how dominant he may be, almost every TV show she’ll see, the women she volunteers with, her whiny sister, your pastor, the magazines at the dentist’s office, and the other mothers at the playground will all tell her she’s being too nice, that she needs to stand up for herself, that she should be jealous of how much “freedom” you have, that she has more important things to do than ensure her own children grow up happy and stable, that if she’s unhaaaapy all she has to do it file a few papers and she can get a hefty chunk of the salary you’ve busted your ass for.

Only your strength and hers together, bound by the Power that transcends both of you, has any chance of standing against the legal and cultural climate bent on your unhappiness.  There will be rough times, and if both of you don’t mean the words of that oath with every ounce of strength you’ve got, there’s no point in even trying.

The Proverbial Bathwater

As flawed as some marriages were in prior eras, Marriage reflected the Ideal.  If the man abused his power, it meant he needed to get his ass in line, not that we should metaphorically castrate all men.

Unfortunately, the churchian appeals to “man up” don’t attempt to rectify this, they depend on it; they need you to be weak to fall for their bullshit schemes.  They’re not upholding the Godly conception of Marriage, they’re actively opposing it.

So for those of us in the pro-marriage camp, we’re stuck fighting them and those who’ve given up on the concept altogether.

Part of me wants to give up on it (and I almost have), but I won’t.  I’ve become (more or less) the man I want to be, so if I ever encounter a woman who seems capable of actually adding to my life, to helping me achieve my Mission, I’m ready.

It’s no longer about getting random waitresses to worship me (although that’s still fun), it’s about the Mission; I am what I was created to be.  But if she’s going to come along, she’d best be ready to be Mine.  It’s not a question of ego anymore.

If I find her, great.  If not, I’ll still have a blast.

 

*  I’ve wanted to like to that analysis of Driscoll’s “Stepping Up” video for a while but it’s never quite fit in.  Nevertheless, Sturges’ take on the potentially inadvertent positive message therein is a great insight and definitely worth a read.