SelfAdoration.com

I’ve been picked up as a linked blog by Manosphere.com, a boon for me. I’ve been dying to talk to men-centric bloggers for a long time, but I’m a fish who doesn’t seem to fit into anyone’s pre-fab category creels, so, until now, I’ve been left flopping on the boat-dock. No more. I’m in with the in crowd now.

And just at the right time, because I’m the stuff of fresh content, every blogger’s dream. Here’s my news, Cliff’s Notes style:

Women can’t fix marriage and family. Only men can.

If we can save the family, we can save the world.

The absolute best thing for intact families is for them to stay intact. Father’s Day is written to help dads regain control of their marriages, their families – their lives.

What could be more manospherical that that?

This is a book married (and to-be-married) men need to know about. Who among the #Manosphere will be first to review it?

Anthony Johnson of The 21 Convention is only doing one show this year – and it’s a killer. I’ll be there, but I’m afraid I might be outshone by this galaxy of talent:

1. Anthony Dream Johnson (unannounced)
2. Socrates – keynote speaker (relationships)
3. Brent Smith (dating/lifestyle)
4. Greg Swann (philosophy)
5. James Marshall (dating/lifestyle)
6. Steve Mayeda (dating/lifestyle)
7. Bill DeSimone (exercise)
8. Skyler Tanner (fatherhood)
9. Sasha Daygame (dating/lifestyle)
10. James Maclane (dating/lifestyle)
11. Nick Sparks (dating/lifestyle)
12. Dr. Doug McGuff M.D. (health/philosophy)
13. Drew Baye (exercise)
14. Don Watkins (philosophy)
15. James Steele II Ph.D. (exercise)
16. Dr. Eric Daniels Ph.D. (philosophy)
17. Ed Aiken (self defense)
18. Dr. Ellington Darden Ph.D. (exercise)
19. Edward Druce (career/entrepreneurship)
20. Dr. Paul Jaminet Ph.D. (health/nutrition)
21. Damien Diecke (dating/lifestyle)
22. Robbie Kramer (dating/lifestyle)

Socrates is the keynote speaker, and that alone is reason to be there, but there are other speakers on this list I’m dying to see. Dr. Doug McGuff slayed me when I spoke at the 21C event in Austin in 2012. Eric Daniels and Don Watkins are both Big-O Objectivists, and James Steele qualifies for a small-o, at a minimum, so couldbe there’ll be a rumble – or at least a spirited debate. Steve Mayeda and Robbie Kramer can each tell the most painful of truths with stand-up hilarity. I’m not as familiar with the other speakers, but, plausibly excluding myself, Anthony picks nothing but stars.

I’m very proud to be speaking, but I will be best benefitted by hearing all the speakers and by interacting with the attendees, a very impressive bunch of young men:

I’m a full-time professional sales monster, but I don’t hustle anyone, ever. If you’re a young man looking to set a better vector for your life, over the course of three days Anthony will give you a ton of ideas along with a host of very strong role models. He advises you to “become the hero of your own life,” and I think that’s an excellent way of summarizing the impact of the conferences he hosts.

This year’s event is in Tampa from October 24-26. If you can be there, you’ll come away with a lifetime of indelible memories – and a brand new plan.

Want to (more…)

This is a silly article, but it’s actually wonderful news: It illustrates how little physicists actually know about the universe, and how much of what they say is pure ‘inflated’ bullshit.

The news?

The universe shouldn’t exist — at least according to a new theory.

We are the wise organisms, and the work we have done in a mere five millennia of serious effort is astounding. But we are as small children peering at dusk into a deserted mansion through the keyhole. What we have seen so far is amazing. What we have not seen yet is almost everything.

This is not Plato’s Cave. We can know, we just don’t yet. Always take the time to remind yourself that everything a scientist (especially a tax-funded ‘scientist’) says is at least 95% suspect, subject to lengthy, hyper-redundant verification.

Meanwhile, the knowledge sought by physicists (especially tax-funded ‘physicists’) is almost certain to prove useless, if it is ever proved at all, in your day-to-day life. Someday people may truly understand the physical universe, but you are likely to have been dead for eons by them.

The actual, practical problems of your undoubtedly real life are far more pressing, and the solutions to those dilemmas will prove far more beneficial to you. While you live, live, and let the physicists mystify each other.

Wow. I ignored this last week, because this is obviously an ass-covering exercise.

1. Ayn Rand took Social Security.

2. She knew that was criminal.

3. As with her adultery, she invented an elaborate rationale why wrong was special-snowflake-right in her case: Despoiling young people is predation, except when they’re being despoiled in an act of restitution unknown to anyone but Ayn Rand.

This is disgusting:

Precisely because Rand views welfare programs like Social Security as legalized plunder, she thinks the only condition under which it is moral to collect Social Security is if one “regards it as restitution and opposes all forms of welfare statism” (emphasis hers). The seeming contradiction that only the opponent of Social Security has the moral right to collect it dissolves, she argues, once you recognize the crucial difference between the voluntary and the coerced.

Money stolen from you is no longer yours. You failed to defend your property. Stealing an allegedly equal amount from an uninvolved innocent is not justice but simply more crime.

Moreover: How is this not asking “another man to live for” her sake?

From Man Alive:

The paths to error are infinite, but two landmarks I have learned to rely on, in listening to people trying to justify their evil actions, are the logical fallacies Tu Quoque and Two Wrongs Make A Right. Tu Quoque is Latin. It means, “You do it, too.” When you catch your teenager swiping a beer, the pre-fabricated rationale will surely be, “Well, you drink, why can’t I?!?” And you were probably very young when you first heard some little proto-brute justifying his vengeance by bellowing, “Well, he hit me first!” – ergo, two wrongs make a right. You should probably be on your guard against any statement that starts with a “well” and ends with an exclamation point. That particular verbal construction seems to fit very comfortably in the mouths of liars and thugs. But when you hear those two logical fallacies being deployed in tandem, what you are hearing, almost certainly, is a cunningly-crafted rationalization of an abominable injustice.

Rand’s apologist has done nothing (more…)

This is a chapter extracted from Father’s Day, an exploration of promiscuity and chastity in the context of marriage. Of all the people who should be celebrating this book – fathers, mothers, egoists, conservatives – the people who should be singing the loudest hosannahs are the Christians: I’m giving you proofs of chastity and monogamy that your kids can’t dismiss by rejecting your religion.

Chapter 15. The Joy of Love-Making

There is nothing positive about the so-called ‘sex-positive’ argument. Traditional religious ideas about love, sex, marriage and family are often arbitrary and irrational, and they are in any case subject to easy attack by being defended with an over-arching, take-it-all-or-leave-it-all super-natural moral philosophy. The idea of chastity – never having sex with another person unless your are truly making love to each other – is not wrong, but traditional defenses of it are weak, where the more-modern feminist and academic arguments for promiscuity seem very strong – especially to the appetites.

The problem is here: You cannot be both promiscuous and chaste, not at the same time in your life, and so you cannot be both cheap in your own eyes, available to many if not to just any, and simultaneously precious, a thing to be treasured and never shared. No woman will see you this (more…)

I would love to excite your interest and incite your action: I want to save a few dozen-million marriages, and I need your help.

Father’s Day will save marriages – it already is pre-release – and in consequence many children now growing up will themselves be better spouses and parents.

You can find both printed and Kindle eBook versions here: http://bit.ly/FathersDayPrintBook

The printed book is $10, because no dad wants to think he wouldn’t spend ten bucks on his wife and kids. The Kindle edition is 99¢, because his wife may not be quite sure the guy is worth a whole dollar just now.

The Bitly link is easy to share – and, yes, that’s a hint. I need Amazon reviews, blog reviews, Facebook reviews, Goodreads reviews and a rash of cascading Tweets. More than anything, I need for you to pass this book along to every dad you know.

Everyone who has read Father’s Day has seen him- or herself in it. This really is the magic bullet for marriage and family: If dad wants his family to work, it almost certainly will. If he doesn’t, it almost certainly won’t.

I’m talking right at that guy, the ambivalent young father. If I’m right about him, everyone around him will see the changes in him right away, increasingly and enduringly, after reading this book.

Now THAT’s a Father’s Day gift!

This is a good conversation starter for Sunday, but what it is, ultimately, is a re-org. First dad takes back his family, then, in due course, the middle class takes back the world.

How’s that for ambition?

Want a review copy? Speak up – but follow through with the Amazon review or blog post.

Want to annoy a feminist? I’m your man. When it comes to paper bullets of the mind, this book is a full magazine.

Want to help a good dad become a better dad, thus helping him to launch his children into a much better orbit? Have I got a book for you…

From today’s homily at The Church of Splendor, a discussion of the latest spree-killing in the context of the on-going dismantling of the family as a redoubt against the therapeutic state.

I’m finishing a book just now written for fathers of still-intact families – with advice on how to make sure things stay that way. If you would like to be involved in the revision process – that means you have to read and respond quickly – speak up.

Here is a list of 575 verbs. If you put the word “I” in front of each one of them, and then follow through, you are defying malign fate by acting in your own behalf — which is my definition of virtue.

This list started with me, and Cathleen Collins and Teri Lussier made important contributions to it. At some point, I’ll write software around these verbs. For now, take a look and see if you can add to the list.

 
abstract, accelerate, accept, acclimate, accomplish, accuse, achieve, acquire, acquit, act, adapt, add, adjust, admire, admonish, adore, advise, advocate, affect, agitate, allow, am, amble, amend, anticipate, apostrophize, applaud, apply, appoint, appreciate, apprehend, approve, argue, arise, ascend, aspire, assign, assist, attain, attend, attest, attract, author, awaken

balance, beam, bear, befriend, begin, behold, believe, benefit, bind, birth, bless, blossom, bubble, build, buy

calibrate, cancel, capture, care, carry, castigate, cause, caution, celebrate, challenge, change, check, cherish, choose, clarify, clean, cleanse, climb, coach, collaborate, color, comfort, commence, communicate, compare, complete, compose, comprehend, compute, conceive, concentrate, conclude, condense, conduct, confirm, confront, connect, conquer, conserve, consider, construct, consult, consume, contemplate, contract, control, converse, convince, cooperate, correct, counsel, court, covet, crave, create, cultivate, cure, customize

dance, dare, decide, deduce, defend, define, delegate, delight, delimit, deliver, demand, demonstrate, derive, describe, deserve, design, desire, detail, detect, determine, develop, devise, devote, diagnose, dicker, dignify, direct, disclose, discover, discuss, dispatch, display, dissect, distinguish, do, document, draft, draw, dream, dress, drive

earn, edit, educate, effect, elevate, elicit, embrace, empathize, employ, encapsulate, enclose, encourage, endure, energize, enfold, engage, engineer, enhance, enjoy, enlarge, enlighten, ennoble, enrich, ensure, enthrall, entrust, enumerate, envision, escape, establish, evaluate, evolve, exalt, examine, excel, exclaim, execute, exemplify, exercise, exhibit, expedite, experience, experiment, explode, explore, expose, expound, express, extend, extricate, exult

face, farm, fashion, father, favor, favorite, feature, feel, find, finish, fix, flow, flower, focus, forecast, forget, forgive, fortify, foster, found, frolic

gain, gambol, gather, generate, give, glow, grace, grasp, grow, guard, guide

handle, harvest, heal, hear, heft, help, hold, honor, hope, hug, hurry, husband, hustle

identify, ignite, illuminate, illustrate, imagine, implement, improve, improvise, include, (more…)

I saw God’s Not Dead with Cathleen and I surprised myself by actually liking it. It’s baldly tendentious, as any polemical film would be, but it’s needlessly strawmaniacal where it could have been more effective, in my opinion, by not so egregiously stacking the deck. Even so, it’s a serious film about serious ideas, and I was fully engaged with it from start to end – which almost never happens for me at the cinema.

The big story is Romans versus Christians, modernized to a university classroom. There are half-a-dozen parallel threaded sub-plots weaving in and out of the main story, and all of this is deftly handled. The forces of persecution are represented by a truly diabolical professor, and this was a dumb move. You are persuasive when you best your opponent’s best arguments, not when you cherry-pick for his worst.

But I always like a story about standing your ground, and God’s Not Dead delivers that in many of its stories, making a big Capraesque show of the triumph of the individual in the end. I don’t love the foregone intellectual conclusion, and I could have argued either side of the ‘debate’ better than the screenwriters did, but I am five-by-five with the Nazarene about rendering unto Caesar, so standing up to bullies always wins with me, even grossly-caricatured Snidely Whiplash bullies.

I love the Red Cam, and the Red Cam loves God’s Not Dead. The photography and sound are both very professional, and the acting almost never jars. This is a better than average indie, all the way Hollywood in every way that should matter.

I could wish the Christians writing this film had had greater confidence in their arguments, because making the atheist such a monster makes the theistic case look weak and corrupt, unsuited to a fair fight. The consequence is that God’s Not Dead preaches only to the choir. Anyone who might have been persuaded will be put off, instead, by the blatant unfairness of (more…)

They never follow any star but their own.

Live your own life. No one can do it for you, but you can leave it too much undone worrying what someone else is doing instead.

And live like Loki, laughing at anyone who thinks it pertinent to laugh at you.

You have one dance to play, one reel, one madrigal, one dougie. Will you waste every minute of your time on life’s stage searching for the perfect score, or will you take your chance and play?

“I can’t escape from your poor choices? Wanna bet?”Dietmar Temps / Foter / Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

This is an amazingly good example of hideously bad ‘science’ – racism with a rationale: Paleo-Marxism, our ancestors’ diets condition our ideas.

Every argument against free will is an argument against liberty and for tyranny. That’s what they’re for.

Human beings drive their lives by consciously-acquired ideas, not by their tools, their circumstances, their diets, their parents’ diets or how their parents make a living. There is no conditioned response, no programming, no determinism in any of its many, many equally-specious forms.

The human will is free, purposive behavior is consciously chosen, and everything else ‘science’ elects to say on the subject of human behavior is false, ab initio, to these two facts. Why? Because tyranny does not make sense, so witch doctors must be hired to make it seem utterly necessary regardless.

If this ‘science’ serves any other purpose than to reinforce the idea in the reader’s mind that ‘a leopard can’t change his spots,’ I’m not seeing it. As with tragedy and satire in art, futility and despair in ‘non-fiction’ are how tyranny saps resistance.