Many men refuse to face their limitations.

Readership: Men;
Author’s Note: This essay was written on 2022/3/28-29.
Theme: Overcoming Obstacles
Length: 1,800 words
Reading Time: 6 minutes

Men are measured by their Actions, or by the lack thereof

The Jack said,

“The measure of a Man is his readiness in taking action in obedience to His Life Calling.”

The contrapositive statement is also true, which is to say,

“A man who fails to take action in obedience to His Life Calling is a failure as a man.”

When we think of masculinity through this lens, it can reveal areas in which failing men fail as reasons why they fail.  Therefore, men who don’t take action and fail are worse than men who do take action and fail.

As I stated before, Ted Beale (AKA Vox Day) was wrong to trivialize the risks men take when they marry, and to portray all men who stay single as risk-averse cowards, but he was right in that some men simply refuse to do the necessary work, and use all kinds of excuses to justify their unwillingness.

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Case Study — E11i0t R0dgәr*

To offer one extreme example, E11i0t R0dgәr was one such man.

The deti brought up R0dgәr in a comment…

“2014 was the year in which the sphere started getting a lot of attention due to the E11i0t R0dgәr incident.  R0dgәr was wrongly identified as being part of the Manosphere/PUA culture when he was most decidedly not — he was on sites like PUAHate and SlutHate which were about as anti-Manosphere as it gets without being feminist.”

… and that sparked a vague memory of something E11i0t wrote that I think fits into The Status Signaling Narrative discussion. That led me down a rabbit hole where I found even more of his alleged quotes. And now you get to be the lucky recipients of my research, because I’m on vacation, and have some time on my hands for a change.

To start off, let’s consider this quote from E11i0t.

“Men shouldn’t have to look and act like big, animalistic beasts to get women.  The fact that women still prioritize brute strength just shows that their minds haven’t fully evolved…”

~ E11i0t R0dgәr

The Guardian: ‘PUAhate’ and ‘ForeverAlone’: Inside E11i0t R0dgәr’s online life (2014/5/30)

Note the lame excuses.

  • No one said that “men have to look and act like big, animalistic beasts to get women.”  It is observably true, however, that getting stronger makes a man more attractive to women than he would be otherwise.
  • According to E11i0t, his unwillingness to do the work to improve himself wasn’t a problem. The problem was that women’s “minds haven’t fully evolved”, which sounds a lot like what fat chicks say about men who prefer slender women (i.e., almost all of us).

Other men tried to help E11i0t to no avail.

“Everyone is focusing on E11i0t’s lack of success with women, but they need to appreciate he was unable to communicate with anyone. He was so shy and painfully awkward. He had a boring personality and he didn’t talk.”

~ Philip Bloeser

Daily Mail: EXCLUSIVE: ‘I tried to offer him advice on talking to girls, but he wouldn’t do it’: Virgin killer’s best friend reveals he warned his mother about disturbing Facebook post months ago (2014/5/29)
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Remember how Deep Strength and The Jack have emphasized the importance of learning to talk to people in general?

“He would never dream of approaching a girl, he just expected them to come to him, which they didn’t.  Even if any of them ever had, it wouldn’t have lasted long, because he wouldn’t chat to them.

I remember he once said to me: ‘I saw this really attractive girl today and she didn’t even come up to me, she ignored me.’  I asked him if he tried talking to her and he said no.

I tried to offer him advice and encourage him to talk to girls, but he wouldn’t do it.“

~ Philip Bloeser

E11i0t refused to do the work.  Here’s more.

“I remember giving him an assignment once so he could try to establish some kind of dynamic with a woman.

I told him, ‘When you see a woman next time you’re on campus and you like her hair or sunglasses, just pay her a compliment.’

I told him, ‘It’s a freebie, something in passing, you’re not trying to make conversation. Keep walking, don’t make any long eye contact, just give the free compliment.’ The idea being you might make a friend if you make someone feel good.”

~ Dale Launer

BBC News: How I tried to help E11i0t R0dgәr (2014/7/9)

That’s pretty decent advice.  The point here is not to turn a shy young man into Peter Poon-Slayer.  The point is to help a shy young man incrementally get over his crippling fear of talking to girls.  It’s a bit like Exposure Therapy, which incrementally exposes people to the source of their phobia and helps them get over their fear.

So, how’d it go?  No spoilers.

“I got in touch with him a few weeks later and asked if he did it.  He said ‘no’.  And when asked why not, he said, ‘Why do I have to compliment them?  Why don’t they compliment me?’“

~ Dale Launer

Again, E11i0t refused to do even the simplest gesture of work.

It’s pretty clear, E11i0t adamantly refused to adopt typical traits of masculinity, and instead decided to inflict his “revenge” on the world in the 2014 Isla Vista murder rampage in which he killed six people and injured 14 more.

I’m not saying that every man who refuses to do the work is mass-murder / suicide waiting to happen.  Were that true, we’d be ankle-deep in blood right now.  Also, if I painted with such a broad brush, I’d be doing the same thing as that for which I criticized Ted Beale.

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Prodigious Pathetic Pathology

E11i0t R0dgәr is obviously a vanishingly rare case (thank God), so why bring him up at all? Because everyone knows who he was, and because I have actual links to actual quotes from him, and from people who knew him in real life. The same is not true of excuse-making men I know in real life.

I encourage readers to peruse this page at WikiQuote, full of quotes from E11i0t R0dgәr.  You’ll see all kinds of themes and statements that are nearly identical to the writings and sayings of other excuse-making men.  These habits are not rare.  I’ll point out two of them here.

  1. E11i0t R0dgәr refused to deal with reality as it is.  Instead, he expected reality to bend itself around him.  E11i0t whined about women preferring strong men.  He could’ve gotten his skinny @ss in the squat rack and doubled his strength in six months,** but heavy squats are hard.  Whining on the internet is easy.  This refusal to deal with reality is analogous to fat women’s “body positivity” movement.  Self-discipline is hard.  Whining about “fatphobia” is easy.  Surely, you can think of men who refuse to deal with reality as it is.
  2. E11i0t R0dgәr had a problem for every solution.  He didn’t even bother to try the good advice he received.  Men are supposed to be problem solvers.  A man who has a problem for every solution is the exact opposite of a problem solver.  I bet you can think of men who similarly refuse to try good advice, or even lie about trying good advice.  Again, this is analogous to fat women who say they “tried” this diet, and that diet, and nothing worked, when in fact, they were sneaking pints of ice cream at midnight.

There’s much, much more, because E11i0t was a worst case whack job, but you get the picture.  My point here is that many men share this same attitude towards women and towards life in general.

I keep comparing these habits to those of fat women, because I’ve seen men rightly complain about fat women’s nonsense, then turn right around and apply the same twisted “logic” to themselves.  I bet you’ve seen it too.

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Facing Limitations

Again, I’m not saying any of those men are going to commit mass-murder/suicide.  Maybe E11i0t R0dgәr was born with a loose screw, or maybe his parents messed him up beyond repair.  I have no idea.  But we can all learn from his negative example.

You can ignore reality indefinitely, but you can’t ignore the consequences of ignoring reality indefinitely.  Ignoring reality is like beating your head against a reinforced concrete wall, because your goal is on the other side of the wall, and expecting the wall to give.  It ain’t gonna happen.  The result is compounding frustration, and a sore head.

It makes a lot more sense to accept reality for what it is.  Sometimes that means finding a way around the wall.  Sometimes that means accepting that the original goal is unachievable, and doing something else.  Sometimes that means deciding that the effort to get around the wall isn’t worth the reward of the original goal.  In any case, that requires an accurate assessment of what one can change, what one can’t change, the effort required, and the risks, costs and benefits involved.  The longer one takes to start the process, the worse the problem gets, and the less time one has to fix it.  All of that requires honesty, which is sorely lacking among excuse-makers.

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Nothing to lose by trying

That brings us back to Ted Beale.  He was right when he said…

“If your life sucks, then change it. What have you got to lose?”

Vox Popoli: At least his feelings are safe (2022/3/21)

Suppose a man improves his life, and he still doesn’t find female companionship.  What’s better; a crappy life with no woman, or a better life with no woman?  Where’s the downside?

And, spare me the “It’s easy for him to say…” excuse.  So what if it is?  Where’s the sense in refusing to improve one’s own life because it’s “easy” for someone else to say?

Besides, nobody said any of this was easy.  Like weight loss, and heavy squats, if it was easy, everyone would do it.  Few people do, precisely because it’s hard.

Finally, no one can help a man who won’t help himself.  A man who won’t do the work is best left to the consequences of his inaction.  We all have finite time and resources, and infinite demands on them.  They’re better spent elsewhere.

* Name has been cornwalled to avoid unwanted traffic.
** I’m not exaggerating about a young man doubling his strength in six months.  Six months is actually very conservative.  It could even be done in less time than that!  For more about how to do this, please see my earlier post about the Starting Strength workout model, How to double your strength in 3 months (2022/4/1).  But, like I said, if it was easy, everyone would do it.

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