The first post in my dissection of MASCULINITY AMIDST MADNESS by Ryan Landry (The New American Sun, formerly Social Matter and the Weimerica Weekly podcast). For this post, we'll be looking at Chapter 01 and why the true masculine mindset is the STOIC MINDSET.


In the first chapter of "MASCULINITY AMIDST MADNESS," Landry sets the ground work for the masculine mindset- seek truth, be strong, and have a stoic mindset: "The person one presents should be the man of order among the chaos of children" (01). Children represent chaos, men represent order. [if you're interested in looking at the order vs chaos dynamic, in a larger historical sense, I wrote an essay on that].

When we think of order, we think of truth and justice- we think of noble pursuits and making good use of our time- and we think of rational thought prevailing over emotion.

Think of rational thought as reality and emotion as a kind of drug-induced anti-reality. Not that emotions can't be useful, maybe leading you to positive action, or an eventual clarity of thought, but reacting based on pure emotion alone will typically lead to poor decision making. The stoic mindset is to understand emotions as a kind of temporary, alternative-reality that can cloud proper decision making- not that you should repress them, but always understand them in that context.

"There should be no fear in failing and no over exuberance in succeeding. Goals can be tiered and for any realm of your life. Facing challenges will become easier as you amass wins and learn from failures" (08)

Enjoy your success. Acknowledge what it took to become successful in any given endeavor- but the emotion of exuberance will only lead to over-confidence and eventual failure; one must be humble in victory to ensure future victories!

However, this idea must be taken to its logical end- it's not enough to be unswayed by temporary emotions but to always have a love of your own fate- this is the basic tenant of the STOIC MINDSET.

When I was in high school, I took a class on Improvisational Acting (or, you know, "improv") where I had two key take-aways- 1) improv absolutely sucks and is the worst kind of hack comedy (a banana, a children's hospital and OJ Simpson! Go! eye roll), and 2) one of the games we practiced, called "best friends," meant to sharpen our ability to do awful comedy, actually functioned as a simple microcosm for how to live your life.

Incredible that this was probably the single best lesson I learned in all of high school!

You played "best friends" by grabbing a partner and improvising a story together, where you'd each trade off every few lines... the only catch was, you needed to keep the story moving forward, you could never look back and contradict what your "best friend" said- in other words, you need to always go with the flow. So if you start a story grounded in reality about a guy working at McDonald's and your partner introduces space aliens, suddenly you're telling a sci-fi story.

In short, this is the STOIC MINDSET in action. No matter what happens, you move forward. You must have a love of your own fate. Everything, even the worst hardships, aren't happening to you- they're happening for you. You allow the resulting emotion to pass, look at where your pieces ended up falling on the metaphorical board, and plot your next moves from there.

The stoic will understand that nothing is owned- everything is borrowed and must eventually be returned. You love your pet, but eventually, you will have to return them to the Earth. Your relationship ended, the love she had for you faded- but it was always temporary. Your parents dying will hurt the most- but this is a chance to become stronger, reflect on your life and goals, and learn more about yourself.

Everything is borrowed- you must love your fate and move forward, always.

Robert Greene referred to this as "the hustler's flow" in his criminally underrated "The 50th Law." 50 Cent had to learn this lesson to become a successful street hustler- you cannot look back, you cannot allow emotion to cloud rational decision making, and you must always deal with the reality of your present.

Even if your reality sucks, the only way to make the most of it is to embrace it, use it, and plot your next moves because no amount of losing yourself in emotion can change the reality you were blessed with!

Stoicism must be the foundation of the masculine mindset!


This covered a tiny fraction of the first chapter of MASCULINITY AMIDST MADNESS- purchase it on Amazon, and join the discussion!

K I LL T O P AR T Y (latest post: "Purity and Mayhem")

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