The stronger you are, the less anyone cares about you

I recently attended a fund-raising dinner at a local drop-in center. One of my good friends is involved in running the place so I figured I'd go along and show my support.

For those who don't know what a drop-in center is, its a place where homeless people can go to take shelter temporarily and get support. They don't have beds per-se, but they do have things like showers and a soup kitchen, as well as people who can assist with re-integrating the homeless into the workforce.

Fundraisers at places like these of course attract a small army of self aggrandizing leftist faux-bleeding heart assholes, and on this particular night they were out in force. The room was full of LGBTQRSWTFBBQ's, hipsters, artists, feminists, SJWs and all kind of other socialites who just couldn't wait to show how edgy and charitable they were by oh-so-selflessly supporting the downtrodden.

The main attraction was a speech from a reformed homeless guy named Craig. Craig told us his story as a case study into how this drop-in centre saved him from oblivion, and thus why its such an important feature of any self respecting community. Craig's story went something like this:

• Craig was an average beta guy working an unimpressive yet stable white collar admin job.
• Then, his wife walked out on him and took the kids.
• As a result, Craig was unhappy.
• Craig turned to alcohol to drown his sorrows.
• Soon, he became an alcoholic. As a result, he couldn't function well enough to keep his job, and he got fired.
• Without a source of income, and addicted to booze, Craig soon lost his rental home because he had no money.
• For a while he stayed with friends, but ended up developing a habit of stealing from them to buy alcohol, so most of his friends turfed him out. So he ended up on the street.
• Once on the street he turned to harder drugs to escape his misery and eventually landed a full time job as a heroin addict.
• Because heroin costs money, and Craig didn't have any, he started robbing people and breaking and entering.
• In constant trouble with the law, addicted to smack, and on death's door, Craig was in a crisis.
• Then someone pointed him in the direction of the drop in center and they helped him get back on his feet.
• As a result of a huge amount of assistance generously donated by the volunteers at the drop in center, Craig now has a job again and he's not homeless anymore.

Of course the assembled crowd absolutely slobbered over this guy and his incredible stories from the street. His speech was met with thunderous applause from the audience and he was mobbed with well wishers afterwards, all of whom wanted to get up close to this Jesus-like representative of the homeless. People were gasping with admiration saying stuff like "What strength of character, what ability to endure! What a hero!" etc etc.

I didn't say anything at the time, but I was totally disgusted.

This guy Craig is a fucking asshole. All he has done his entire life is be a useless burden on society. From his lack of ambition and drive which saw him in a shitty job to begin with, the entire timeline of his story involves him taking, taking, taking from society and giving nothing back. He bashed innocent people for money, stole their property to support his habit, doped himself up all day, then benefited from hundreds of hours volunteered by the staff at the drop in centre, and now is back worse off than when he started, his brain fried by nearly a decade of heroin addiction.

So what is Craig's reward for his complete inability to take any personal responsibility for his choices, his actions and therefore his life? The endless admiration of an entire room full of people waxing lyrical about his "courage" and "strength".

Thing is, the first half of Craig's story was very similar to that of one other person in the room - me.

About 18 months before I attended this fundraiser, my wife left me, too. I found out that she'd been cheating on me for over 1.5 years of our 6 year relationship and she eventually fucked off to be with the other guy. I was plunged into a deep depression and I lost my job because I was unable to function, just like Craig. I lost a lot of my friends, because a lot of them had met me when I was married and it was "too weird" for them now that I was divorced. My ex took a huge chunk of my money, and combined with the costs involved in renting a new apartment and losing my job, I nearly went broke.

But I didn't turn to alcohol. Though I went to some fucking dark places, I just kinda kept stepping forward and eating the pain. With time, it gets better, and once the worst was over, I started to rebuild. I did all the usual shit - I began lifting, got a new job, lost weight, got fit. Started approaching, got laid some, made new friends, started having fun with life again. I rebuilt my finances and my social life. It took forever and it was extremely difficult but now I'm 100x happier than I was when I was married, and more importantly I've discovered what it means to be a man.

Thing is, I'll never have an audience cheering for me. I'm not enough of a victim. I don't have any stories to tell you about how I bashed some guy or ran from the cops. I was never a burden to anyone, and I didn't make my problems anyone's responsibility but my own. Hardly anyone even knows about all the anguish and the turmoil I went through because I make a habit of not forcing it on anyone who doesn't ask, because I think its fucking rude (outside a forum like this one, for example). I just sat in my bedroom alone and ate the pain with quiet dignity. "Man gets royally fucked over but quietly endures without bothering anyone" just isn't an interesting story.

Today's society is a race to the bottom to see who can paint themselves as the most downtrodden, desperate victim as possible. On the other side, you have the other race to the bottom to see who can display the biggest outpouring of altruistic generosity for those downtrodden. Our heroes are those who are the most pathetic, the most dejected, the most parasitic and the most useless, and their ever so generous and charitable saviors. There is no room to appreciate a man like you, who shows independence, self worth, self sufficiency and strength.

Remember this as you go on your journey through TRP - modern society HATES the strong, and loves the weak. We here at TRP are fighting to make ourselves the strong, and as such we will always be denigrated as oppressors and patriarchal bullies, simply by default. The stronger of a man you become, the less valuable you are to people who worship the weak to enhance their own sense of self worth.

Don't get distracted. You're not doing this for the applause, and you're not going to get any. You're doing it for yourself.