Background: One of my hobbies for many years has been gardening. I have a bit of a green thumb and am known to deliver laundry baskets full of fruits and veggies to family and friends come harvest time each year.

To accomplish this most efficiently you can start months before you put anything in the ground and grow indoors using skylights and florescent shop lights. Then, come late April and Early May (depending on where you live) you "harden" the tiny plants you grew indoors by leaving them outside for increasingly longer periods of time and getting them used to the harsher conditions outside.

Finally, you replant them into the ground, fertilize them regularly, keep the weeds away and trail the climbing plants up trellises.

The Observation: My son (yes, the same infamous young teenager who was tied up by his dad in a much maligned and shamed roughhousing incident) came pounding on my office door one evening.

"Dad! Dad! You are hurting your plants!"

Dad: "Whoa, slow down. What are you talking about?"

Overprotected Teenager: "I mean, you have a fan blowing on them and the are all bent over and wiggling. You know, in the wind."

Me: "Yes, and..."

Teenager: "Your fan is hurting your plants. That can't be good. They are bent over."

Me: "Yes, so?"

Teenager: "Well, it can't be good. It is stressing them."

Me: (In my best WISNIFG accent): "What is it about stress that is a problem?"

Teenager: "Seriously? Don't you want the perfect growing conditions for them?"

Me: "Absolutely not! If you have the perfect conditions and protect them from everything and (giving him my best Dad scolding eye) if you do everything for them and give them everything they want, they will never be able to survive when they get out of the house."

Teenager: (taking several seconds thinking about what I said): "I think I get it. Wow. Wow! Holy Shit, so.....Wow! So you and mom....Wow! So the plants can stand up on their own in the wind. OK, fine."

Fistbump.

Analysis: Blowing a fan on young seedlings does indeed let them grow straight and stand up in the wind. It hardens the stem for when the plants are taken outside to face periods of MUCH greater wind, insects, animals, and the harsh sun. If you take an unprepared plant grown inside and put it outside almost all of them will die.

Conclusion: The connection to Red Pill (as my son immediately saw) is that we begin our lives as tiny seedlings. Many of us were protected fiercely by single mothers and absent, powerless fathers, and many of those young plants withered under the bright sun or even broke in half the first time they tried to stand up in a normal breeze. Some of you guys are still bent over today. Some of you were ripped apart by thunderstorms and others were nearly uprooted by the basketball sized hail that characterize modern relationships.

The good news is that your roots are still in the ground. You are still alive and there is still the ability to learn the lessons that you have been "protected" from and never faced. Begin by standing up in the wind for a little bit more each day, continue by working to physically and mentally expand, and end with a bountiful harvest.