~ archived since 2018 ~

Doubts P2: Ambition.

Datson_Horrenbrand

June 11, 2016

2 upvotes

/r/MGTOW

https://redmalehummingbird.wordpress.com/2016/06/11/doubts-part-two-ambition/

Download the post

Want to save the post for offline use on your device? Choose one of the download options below:

PDF TXT EPUB

Support the archive

Everything here was supposed to disappear. Banned subreddits, deleted communities, cancelled blogs — much of what is archived here survives nowhere else.

It stays free — no paywall, no account — for the next man who comes looking, the way it was free for you.

I pay for the servers, the storage and the bandwidth myself. If you want this record still standing in ten years, become one of the people who keeps it online.

Support the archive

Post Information

Title	Doubts P2: Ambition.
Author	Datson_Horrenbrand
Upvotes	2
Comments	6
Date	June 11, 2016 1:37 PM UTC (10 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MGTOW
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MGTOW/comments/4nleyh/doubts_p2_ambition/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MGTOW/doubts-p2-ambition.632898 https://theredarchive.com/post/632898

Comments

[–]Datson_Horrenbrand[S] 1 point2 points3 points 10 years ago (2 children) | Copy Link

[–]DigitalScetis2 points3 points4 points 10 years ago* (1 child) | Copy Link

Wow...I didn't think my comment got to you so much, RMH.

Here's why I wrote the reply I did. I find little difference between what you wrote and what Aaron Clarey and Mike Savage write about MGTOW; that the only people out there who are doing MGTOW the "right way" do not call themselves MGTOW, and they live their lives by pursuing women, working out, making lots of money and going on adventures.

These men, however, don't constitute the "vast majority" of MGTOW, however, who are just 'bitter, blue pilled losers who can't get laid', using MGTOW as an excuse not to "improve themselves" in a way that looks conspicuously like the things this gynocentric society wants men to do.

That's what I see in your thoughts about the necessity of "ambition" and your previous thoughts in "doubts".

This kind of shaming needs to be responded to in no uncertain terms whenever it appears, RMH, so I apologize if you got hit in the crosshairs with my critique.

Still, I think those critics of MGTOW, and by extension, your critique of MGTOW, presume too much about human happiness in general, and male happiness in particular.

I find it interesting that you start your critique of my observations with the question "what is the ultimate MGTOW definition? You see, you would not find one." And what I find odd is that, in saying this, a lot of assertions are made throughout about what MGTOW are not, followed by a kind of closet assertion about what "going your own way" ought to mean--not just for yourself, but for the rest of us as well.

And the example you give, of Arnold Schwarzenegger, seems to clarify what you think we MGTOW ought to be pursuing. Power. Fame. Riches. Ambition.

Interestingly enough though, the example you give of says little about what a man's internal life ought to be like. His intellectual life. His ability to be comfortable in his own nature. His (for lack of a better term) spiritual state. You think it was this restless hunger, this lack of satisfaction, that caused him to have the drive to achieve power and worldly success.

And yet, it was this same restless hunger that caused him to throw it all away. The politics, his rich famous wife, everything he had built was put into jeopardy. Why would a man that has achieved things that men could only dream about find himself in the arms of a Mexican cleaning woman, so many rungs below him in the SMP?

It's because what we think is going on isn't what is really going on within his soul. This is a man who is so hungry, so unsatisfied, that his desires would have gotten him into a lot of trouble, had he not been lucky enough along the way to fall into the right circumstances.

Assuming we could ever be Schwarzeneggers (we are talking a very small percentage of people), for every Schwarzenegger, there are tens of thousands that never have the luck to make good on their desires. If you don't believe me, watch Pain & Gain.

Ambition, especially, is one of those concepts that needs to be unpacked and explored far more than it has in most of the manosphere. I agree with you that it is a strong male disposition, but is it a free disposition? Or is it one of those relics of gynocentrism that justifies male disposability? You seem to think that ambition explains male happiness well; I have my doubts. I think I stand on good philosophical ground, going back to Plato, that ambition explains male destruction far more than male happiness. This whole "get rich or die trying" mentality leads most men to "die trying" rather than "getting rich". The engine of society is built that way, and it has created many fine things and rewarded many men. But has it made more men more happy than have been made unhappy? I'm not so sure that it has.

Whenever we talk about ambition, it always seems to be about things that women and society want. Now you claim that "ambition is what made men land on the comet recently," but I really don't think ambition had much to do with it. I personally believe Stardusk when he says that we get things like scientific discovery to the extent that we can learn not to be ambitious for things like fame, glory, riches or power. But that's a discussion for another time. Suffice it to say that, when discussing ambition, we don't think of the legion of scientists working on Rosetta crunching numbers in obscurity for a pittance. We think of Schwarzenegger; an example which is far removed from what Rosetta was about.

A much better example of MGTOW, for me, is the story of Shigeru Nakayama, one of the first story posts I made on r/MGTOW.

The so-called "hermit of the jungle" who went his own way into the Amazon rainforest. This is a man who is not obsessed with external trappings of fame, wealth, women and so on. He lived his life in obscurity, just doing the thing that his spirit inclined him to do. Can we call him "ambitious"? Perhaps in a very hackneyed way, but whatever ambition he had was very different than the sort of ambition those "type #3 MGTOW" seem to admire.

And all I'm saying, RMH, is that there are plenty of Shigeru Nakayamas in the world who have learned to dream about things that run counter to the dreams we "ought" to be having about women, power, wealth and all of that. And they can be very robust too, because they are not so tied to acquire those things that others need to validate themselves.

You say that "adventures, experiences and goals is what make yourself- yourself," but it seems that you have a very clear idea of what these adventures, experiences and goals ought to look like. For my part, the adventures which are rather mundane for some might be very insightful for others if they can learn to appreciate the details. There are a lot of very rich, very successful, very 'driven' people who are mental wrecks; they cannot see the good things they have because they are so bothered by the things they want to have. So whenever someone comes by and laments his lack of women, I always remind them (as perhaps you ought to as well), that a lot of the good things in life that they enjoy will probably have to go; most importantly, their freedom to enjoy the things they do now.

That's where I think we ought to be as men who are going our own ways, and this isn't something new. As far back as ancient Greece and Rome, the older men have been telling the younger men that pussy is not all it is cracked up to be. Will they listen? Probably not, but that doesn't make our admonitions any less true.

Heck RMH, I totally get that, at this point in your life, you want to "share your happiness with someone else" that you can also "have sex with". I even have times that I want that as well. But I think that both you and I admit that this might not be possible in the way we dream it does. That's unicorn thinking and NAWALT thinking, and I see you recognizing that at the end. Anything is possible, I suppose, just like an Austrian gym rat becoming the governor of the largest state in the USA. But as Nassim Taleb would say, "consider the graveyard"; the same qualities that made Schwarzenegger who he was are the same qualities that I see among men who are doing badly.

That's just the way I see it, RMH. I've enjoyed a lot of content of yours over the years and I feel, well, far more important than I am in MGTOW circles when you decided to respond to my post. But what I read the last few days seems to run dangerously close to a refutation of all the good things MGTOW has done for men these past few years, in favor of things which, if we are not more careful, may do more harm than good.

[–]Datson_Horrenbrand[S] 0 points1 point2 points 10 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

[–]SnapshillBot0 points1 point2 points 10 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

[–]NaughtyFred0 points1 point2 points 10 years ago (1 child) | Copy Link

[–]Morranaii0 points1 point2 points 10 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link