If you’re NOT paying for a service, or if you’re NOT actively exercising free agency, then YOU are the commodity being sold down the river!

Readership: All; Men; Christian Men;
Theme: The Protestant Reformation 2.0: Resetting Masculinity
Length: 1,400 words
Reading Time: 7 minutes

A Message to Regular Readers

Apologies for not posting regularly lately.  I’ve been really busy, working overtime and writing a research paper.  Also, my wife and I sold our house and bought another one much closer to our workplaces, and in addition to moving and working with an interior designer to make the new house comfortable and livable, there have been so many other related details that must be looked after.

I am exhausted, yet very blessed! (There seems to be a correlation between the two.)

More writings on The Protestant Reformation 2.0: Resetting Masculinity are coming, but are, as of yet, unfinished.  Me thinks it is just as well, since there have been many other good articles and video talks on this topic that have been coming out of the Men’s Sphere lately.  (But, this also adds to the number of sources I will need to review before I can finish my coverage of this topic.)

So for now, here’s a fun post: Carrots and Self-Control.  Enjoy!

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Intro

On Thursday, 2026/8/6, I had a meditative prayer in the afternoon, and I gathered a curious postulate from the nebulae.

“Those who lack sufficient self-control shall be called ‘carrots’.”

My next thought was, “Why ‘carrots’?”  I only received one clue:

“When people think of vegetables, they always think of carrots first.”

I also wondered what ‘sufficient’ means.  The answer to that question will come later.

Why do People have Carrots on the Brain?

I looked this up, and apparently, it is true.  When people are asked to think of a vegetable, they will invariably think of ‘carrots’.

There has actually been some ¡$c!əNt!f!c! research on this topic.

Psychological studies and informal experiments consistently show that a large majority of people (90% or higher) respond with “Carrot”.  Onions, Peas, and Tomatoes are the next most, although seldom, reported vegetables.  Other vegetables, such as broccoli, cabbage, or potato, appear far less often than these.  No one ever responds with beets, Brussels sprouts, eggplants, horseradish, rutabagas, or squash.

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Prototypicality, Priming, and Categorical Thinking

Why do people always think of carrots?

The reason for this phenomenon is because of human psychology.

When asked to “name a vegetable”, the brain quickly retrieves the most central, familiar, and frequently encountered example of the category.

Carrots score high on this prototypicality for several reasons:

  • They are common and well known.
  • They are distinctive in shape (phallic!).
  • They are bright in color (orange!), especially compared to most other vegetables.
  • They frequently appear in everyday language, children’s books, food marketing, and many other cultural references.

In all, ‘carrots’ are an iconic representation of the human psyche’s category of ‘vegetables’.  And so when people recall ‘vegetables’, they immediately think of ‘carrots’ as a representation of this category.

Here’s another example of how categorical thinking works.  When subjects are given many arithmetic problems that all equal 6, at some point, they will stop calculating and mark 6 as the answer to the next problem.  It saves time and mental effort, at the (perceivably reduced) risk of being wrong.

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In short, people’s brains default to ‘carrots’ mainly because of cognitive prototypicality, but only within the vegetable category.  When asked about ‘food’ in general, people’s brains will degrade to the most sumptuous delicacies, e.g., grilled beef steaks, deep fried chicken, pizza, barbecued pork ribs, Doritos, etc.

Moreover, people do not sample randomly from all possible vegetables (or even remain willing to calculate an answer). Instead, they default to the best-fitting and most memorably outstanding prototype.

Also, see my post on Philosophical Dualism (2024/5/27).

The Carrot’s Connection to Self-Control

So what does all this have to do with self-control?

Carrots are indirectly linked to self-control because the socio-psychological contexts in which both are discussed are closely related — even within research studies.  More specifically, because of their prototypicality, carrots are often chosen to figuratively represent choices, motivations, and rewards.

For example,

  • Analogy: The well-known “Carrot and Stick” analogy.  The figurative ‘donkey’ chasing after the carrot on a stick is merely a spurious placeholder for an entity that is motivated by incentives.  Lettuce not forget that the same stick is oft used as a whipping rod.
  • Symbolism: In studies on health and dietary habits, carrots often serve as a convenient, culturally familiar symbol of the “healthy but less immediately rewarding” choice that requires restraint.
  • Snacks: Other studies have shown that people who consider health information when making food-related decisions are more likely to choose carrots over less-healthy options (e.g., as a snack between meals).  This behavior is linked to better self-control.
  • Selection: In self-control research, carrots (or carrot sticks) are frequently used as the classic “virtuous” or less-tempting option that people must choose when exercising restraint (e.g., cake vs. carrots). The ability to select the healthier item is interpreted as a measure of self-control.

Of note, classic ego-depletion experiments by the famed and certified RP credentialed Prof. Roy F. Baumeister and his colleagues attempted to bypass the common prototypicality of carrots by using radishes (another crunchy root vegetable) versus chocolate-chip cookies to deplete the willpower of test subjects.  They found that participants who were forced to eat radishes instead of cookies later showed reduced persistence on difficult tasks, implying that an increase in willpower cannot be enticed nor forced.  In general, when the human will is denied, one is demotivated.

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Conclusions

Going back to the nebulous statement that inspired this study,

“Those who lack sufficient self-control shall be called ‘carrots’.”

Perhaps my sharper readers have already connected the dots, but to help illustrate the connection for general audiences’ understanding, let’s recall why FB, Google, IG, X, and many other internet-based websites and services are ¡Frεε! — it’s because the information generated by the user is the product being sold, thus generating $$$ for the host.

Viz, the user doesn’t need to exercise any self-control, will-power, or make any responsible decisions when interacting online, because whatever they do (collectively) constitutes massive amounts of information that characterizes their inclinations (as a targeted group) — thereby providing information that businesses buy from these sites and then use to adjust their advertisement and sales strategies with more accurate and effective click-bait, gimmicks, incentives, lines, sales pitches, and “special deals”, accordingly.

Also,

  • The prototypical person lacks sufficient self-control and regularly defaults to categorical thinking.
  • Exercising restraint / will power in one area depletes the ego and thus reduces one’s ability to do the same in another area (as per Baumeister’s study).

Likewise, and here is the main point of this essay, those who lack sufficient, agentic self-control are invariably used, abused, and discarded by others who possess a relatively greater, adroit awareness of their better and worst natures.  In more effervescent language, the more socio-emotionally mature (and technologically saavy) individuals are calling the shots and shuffling the riff raff to align with their capricious avarices.  How accountable, compassionate, or responsible these individuals might be is utterly irrelevant, unfortunately, in this Dog-Eat-Dog Jungle Land.   The immature, naïve wimpletons are “the product that is being sold”.  They are the incentives that the business managers, the CIA, the strategists, and power brokers use to barter influence and trade methods of leverage over the masses.

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This is especially true for men.  Men who lack sufficient Detachment / Frame / Internal Locus of Control / emotional and spiritual maturity / motivation, are especially susceptible to manipulation under these respective social forces.  If men are not adequately discerning, acting as autonomously self-controlled free agents, and diligently following their God-ordained purpose in life, then sooner or later, they shall be duly controlled by others — ‘enslaved’ to put it bluntly.  From a spiritual perspective, this is to simply say that if a man is not actively exercising a working faith, then by default, he allows himself to act as a minion of evil and a slave to sin.  All this is why Christian maturity is acutely important in this evil age, and especially for Men.

What is ‘Sufficient’?

As to the meaning of the word ‘sufficient’, the mark of ‘sufficient’ stands as the deciding factor of whether a man can swim with the tides of swashbuckling brine and brimstone, or else be used, abused, discarded, and waylaid, and thus sink to the bottom of Davy Jones’ locker in the deep Blue Pill dreamland of faux fantasy … as contained in the current culture-wide milieu of gynocentric aggrandizement, alongside the disintegrations of the community, church, and family structures, all while “the love of many will grow cold” (Matthew 24:12).  NOT for the faint of heart!

And ironically, as Gunner Q ominously pointed out recently, if you can ‘swim’, then you must be compromised or utterly corrupt, either personally, or organizationally, or else, by logical deduction, you would’ve been targeted by the Evil SIN$ister PTB long ago.

img-1786243226-6a77e89a4bf4a8.51915634.webp“Europe, 1916”, an anti-World War I cartoon illustrated by Boardman Robinson. Today, 110 years later, the words “EUROPE” (in the name) and “VICTORY” (above the carrot) could be replaced with “The West” and “Feminism” (or “The Blue Pill”) respectively.

Summary

In summary, the common Altruistic, Betastized, Blue Pilled, cartoonish, Chivalrous, Church-going, Complementarianish, Churchian Man is a ‘Carrot’ — an incentive to vice, a slave to the Feminine Imperative, a target for extracting ill-gotten gains and usury, and a “Useful Idiot”.  (Idiot is an acronym for an Individual Devoid of Intelligent Organized Thought.)  That is, all his efforts, energy, labor, money, time, and work are being consumed for the profits of cultural hegemons, demonic forces, gynocentric churches, promiscuous W!tches, reviling wives, and many other constantly remonstrating charlatans who practice deceptions, frauds, and lies.  They are all in the same boat, all drifting down the murky River Styx to Həll.

The sorrows of the damned are so sorrowful, that these sorrows are damning, in and of themselves.

Stand tall to the call, as Men, and may God have mercy on the Christian reader.

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