PREFACE:

While this was originally posted on NoFap, I though some of you guys, who haven’t fully swallowed the red pill (or atleast digested it) and are still dealing with problems with porn and masturbation on their road to success, would stand to gain from this advice. With that in mind, I’ve always been a long-time believer in the Red Pill, as well as grateful for its delightfully harsh but fair community, which is why I’d like to give back some.

TL;DR:

When you’re feeling surprise horniness, that’s basically evolution knocking to see if you’re ever gonna, yknow, reproduce. A technique used by the stoics to mitigate this lust is by looking at the various individual elements of the problem and then decide its value to you. Porn is just pixels, and the hot guy or gal you saw on transit is a walking bag of meat. It works surprisingly well. Live in rejection of this forced evolutionary principle, for it is us and us alone who decides what to make of our own lives.

ADVICE:

I’d like to share a piece of advice from a book on Stoicism that I had read recently, which is A Guide to the Good Life by William Irvine. It’s a fantastic primer to stoicism, and I recommend it highly.

In Chapter 10, “On Social Relations: Dealing with Other People” Irvine runs the reader through the various mindsets, means and methods that the stoics of old employed when interacting with other people while still maintaining their “tranquility” (minimizing negative emotions while maximizing positive emotions). This ranges from mental preparation for social interaction, our social duty as humans, the friends we should choose, the presence of others in our everyday thoughts, etc.

Among the different interactions we do have in our lives, Irvine doesn’t fail to include our relationships with the opposite sex (to be more inclusive, let’s make it the subjects of our sexual orientation). The Stoics, according to his readings, have a very straightforward perception of sex. Musonius Rufus and Epictetus, for example, believe that sex should only be in the service of begetting children within the parameters of marriage.

To maintain this partial chastity, Marcus Aurelius, the celebrated philosopher emperor of Rome, devised a technique to extinguish lustful thoughts: if we analyze the individual elements that compose the different objects of our lives, we will learn to see them by their true value.

While I will not argue towards the value of sex in one’s relationship, I will apply this technique in analyzing the effects of porn, the culprit of many of our relapses and existential crises. What is porn, anyway? Let’s look at it brutally. Porn is just a handful of pixels projected on a screen, with some of those pixels being images of stranger’s genitals rubbing against each other, until strange liquid comes out of their orifices. That’s basically the cause of dozens of lifestyle problems for the 300,000+ on this sub. Let’s look inward. If porn, if analyzed in text, isn’t particularly pleasant or appealing, why do we get off on it? This, dear reader, can be summed up to evolution. Over the six million years of human evolution, we somehow managed to not die off like the rest of our cousins in the genus Homo, which is in large part due to the reproduction patterns of the generations before us. Our ancestors, over time, got selected for certain individuals with greater capacity and desire to reproduce, while those lacking these traits died off. Eventually in this extended evolutionary process, the modern human was produced: a creature with a profound and deeply ingrained sex drive that allowed it to proliferate and be the apex predator of the entire biosphere. But, to your great shock I assume, extinction isn’t exactly a looming threat for us nowadays. Why then, should we allow our biology to dictate the direction of our lives when we can become so much MORE?

Zen Buddhism, which in the book Irvine draws many comparisons to Stoicism, provides its own unique application of this analytic technique. Say for example, while sitting down on the commute, you happen to eye upon a particularly attractive man/woman. Insert your cup of tea here. You’re bored, you’re lonely, and the person isn’t anyone you know, so there’s no harm in fantasizing about them right? You might not even realize it, but your mind, in its confused attempt to expedite the process of what it sees as an avenue for reproduction, is already hard at work at hormones to supply the building blocks of that fantasy of yours, and before you know it, you find yourself needing to go to the bathroom. Here’s something to try: why not, when you catch yourself lulled to that temptation, analyze the biological composition of that person. Visualize the beating heart, the expanding and contracting diaphragm, the different layers of skin, the various connections of the muscles and joints. Realize this: they are, like you, human. They aren’t Mr. or Ms. Right. They aren’t beings incapable of doing wrong, of harboring unwanted sexual desire, of grieving the death of a loved one, of thinking too long on a passing remark amongst a group of friends. They eat, sleep, and shit like you and the rest of us, the other 7 billion on this planet and the billions before us. We are walking bags of meat that will one day find their way to the dirt, and the only reason you’re feeling the way you are about a random person YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW is because evolution said so.

I leave you with this, dear reader: do not be a slave to your evolutionary programming. While certain aspects of our existence are out of our control (whether the sun rises tomorrow for instance), so much more isn’t. It is ultimately we who have control over what we make of our circumstances. It is ultimately we who makes ourselves happy. It is ultimately we who make the decision to be the best version of ourselves, to gather up the courage and fortitude to meet the daily challenges of life with excitement and a smile on our face. Keep on fighting the good fight, friends. Consider yourselves free men and women, and go kick life in the ass.

SEND-OFF:

I hope, with earnest goodwill, that my (all-over-the-place) advice will help you get atleast a couple of days more in your streak, or even beyond that, to help you become holistically a better person for yourself and the benefit of others. I can say without a doubt that stoicism has allowed me to be overall a happier, more collected, more confident and most importantly: a more purposeful individual, with a clear goal in each and every moment of living. I confess that, sometimes, I too fall victim to the occasional raised voice against a concerned loved one or the malicious thought towards the driver of the Chevy Camaro that just passed me on the lane, which is why I’m grateful that I adopted this philosophy while young, giving me ample time to practice and refine. I hope that you too will find solace in stoicism, and that if you do find it interesting to test the waters early, with the hope that by the time the truly harsh challenges of life come knocking down you’ll be as golden as Michael Phelp’s billion or so medals.