This is a fictional story meant to illustrate the plot of the film Obsession.

Imagine that I’ve been obsessing over a girl. My productivity has taken a nose-dive. I don’t sleep. My friends are tired of listening to me talk about her.

Imagine that I, DeepLeftAnalysis, was invited to a “party,” which turned out to be a Peter Thiel meetup. I hate Peter Thiel, but I was tricked into going, under false pretenses.

There, I met a right-wing girl -- the opposite of me in every way.

• Whereas I am under the poverty line and live with stinky roommates in a bad part of town, she’s the daughter of a billionaire and lives alone in a penthouse.

• Whereas I share my deepest secrets openly with the internet, she has no social media whatsoever -- not even Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn, because she’s afraid to reveal herself to the world.

• Whereas my greatest fantasy is to die young, to sacrifice my life for some great cause, her fantasy is to use life-extension technology to outlive the singularity.

I know that this is a ridiculous fictional scenario, comically unbelievable, but bare with me. The basic plot so far is this:

1. A man wants a woman.

2. She falls in love with him, almost against her will.

But then things start to go wrong.

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This is a personal journal/diary entry. Hence, it does not count toward my word-count. It’s my attempt at self-therapy. I share it knowing the risk that this sort of thing might be a useless waste of time. Proceed with caution.

I believe in “mind over matter.” Disease can be traced to negative thoughts or beliefs. I know that heuristic sounds silly or mystical to a materialist, but it is useful. If you reduce illness to external factors, this creates learned helplessness. If you instead believe “illnesses are a product of thoughts,” that creates an incentive for positive change. Even if “positive thinking” won’t cure cancer, it has other good effects. Unless the “mind-over-matter” heuristic is stopping you from seeking medical attention, it’s good.1

My faith in materialist medicine declined further after sudden onset of IBS, and they told me, “diet, exercise, sleep, stress.” How do you convince a person to improve their diet, exercise more, be disciplined with sleep, and avoid stress? There is no pill, not injection, no external force. You must use internal psychological methods.

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I just canceled my paid subscription to this blog. There are many reasons to run away.

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I feel electricity ripple up my neck, like I’ve cracked the nut, conquered the demon.

I felt really bad about breaking up with my ex. I felt bad before I did it, while I did it, and after I did it. I’ve felt bad pretty much every day for the past month.

Within each revision, there is a kernel of truth.

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Non-Zionism is giving me the unsolicited advice to get a job, which he has been giving me for the past two years. Bless his heart. He is a father and a husband, and he attends the synagogue, and he does his daily prayers. He is needed. I am not. My life is not routinely scheduled. There are no demands upon me.

Recently, my friend’s brother was hospitalized. His brother is ok, but it was scary. When my father died, I accepted it. When people die, I feel a rush of adrenaline. I feel regret, for not saying what should have been said, or doing what should have been done. But because my father was 6,000 miles away, he was already a ghost. He was already old, and quiet, and reserved. He did not freely share his thoughts or emotions (if he had any).

My father is a good example of a neurotic man who, nonetheless, put his head down, shut up, and went to work. What benefit did that bring?2

My father was, indeed, a hard working man, and he earned money, lost money, married women, divorced, and I am his legacy. What is the point of getting a PhD, and making six figures, and living in that mansion, if in the end... You have one child, and die on the other side of the world, basically alone? Why not be a poor writer instead? What’s the difference?

“Get a job” is such terrible advice. I won’t say I’ve never given it -- I absolutely have told some people to get a job. But it was given as an insult, a term of abuse. You, sir, are so USELESS that you would be better off as a SLAVE. The truly creative man has no need for a “job.” He has a natural passion, a pursuit, a quest, or an adventure. This appears to him without any external stimulus. He is always on the hunt, chasing the next stage, the next step, the next clue. But slaves cannot fathom this life, so they need jobs.3

The sky is sunny, with some large clouds that instantly drop the temperature by 10 degrees. It’s amazing how powerful the rays of the sun are. They travel millions of miles, or some other unimaginably vast distance. They somehow make it all the way here. Traveling at the speed of light, I suppose they aren’t waiting very long. Still, it seems miraculous to me that they can travel such a distance, so quickly, making it through all the obstacles they find on their way -- our magnetic field, our atmosphere, and all the pollution and smog we throw into the sky. Yet they break through it all. It strikes me as a heroic journey. I would like to be a beam of light, traveling millions of miles, busting through everything in my path, to graze someone’s skin and give them warmth. This is love.

The practical reality of a job is that it provides structure, external authority, and excuses. It puts less on me to debate, doubt, and scrutinize. Am I really making an impact on the world? Does anyone really care? Non-Zionism surely does not.

It’s very easy to take something heroic and romantic and to disintegrate it into nothingness. So what if the sun warms my skin? I could simply sit inside, instead. There’s no reason for me to value the sun in this mythical way -- we have central heating, and artificial lighting. I could even go to a tanning salon. There’s nothing special or unique about the rays of the sun.

If I disappeared, the effect would be minimal. Every time I break up with an ex, she cries, and tells me something, “I’m going to kill myself. My life is over. I will never love again.” And then, a few weeks or months, she’s fine. Back to normal. Found another guy. This is how all people are. We ascribe so much love and beauty and value to the light of the sun, and when it fades, we move on and forget. Selective amnesia. Or, we revise history, and change our memories. I didn’t like the sun anyway. Too hot. Gave me burns. There’s always a way to change the past and make it small and insignificant, or even regretful and annoying. I wish I didn’t get skin cancer. I wish I never saw that blasted sun.

But since everything is this way, nothing is this way. Everything can be deconstructed, and therefore, the deconstruction is fake. The love is real. No matter how many times we try to revise history, to wish it away, to make it insignificant, it was indeed real. You can forget it, lie about it, run away from it, but it was real. As is my writing.4

To the extent that you are reading this, you have been taken captive. Perhaps you are skimming, and to that extent, you are still free. But if you read each and every word that I write, then you have been kidnapped, hoodwinked, spell-bound, tied down by vines and tenacles in a dark forest. It reminds me of Silence of the Lambs, where the transvestite dances in front of the mirror. I’m dancing, you’re watching.5

The mind is sick and parasitic in its ability to consume energy and turn it into thought. It’s somewhat like an oven burning wood or coal and expelling smoke. Sure, smoke can send a signal, but it can also just be smoke. Dirty, noxious, polluting smoke.

Should I love the Alpha Female?

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Hi DLA, I need your advice.

I was in Chicago for a two days, visiting a friend. This girl, Jane, also lives in Chicago, and we have a lot of simi…

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I send her a video message, sitting in Wegmans. The call was ugly and awkward, filled with tension, and mutual fear. She didn’t know what her plans would be, whether we would meet or not. She presented as uncommitted, disinterested, but underneath, she wanted me.

March 15th, 11:17pm:

I was sad and desperate. I want her so bad. If I don’t say something, I will lose my chance. She was afraid of being lonely on Spring Break. My opener: what are you studying?

She invites me to a party, but I’m only interested in her. If she likes me, she can “drag me back.” She doesn’t want to have sex, and I tell her “I am more chaste than you.”

Her pictures are stunning, alien, otherwordly, Asian.

She hates normal people. We’re in love.

March 16th, 6:23pm

She sends me a networking event where Palantir recruits people to kill Palestinians, or something. I hate it, and I’m horny for the idea that she is a man trapped in a woman’s body. She says she’s “cosplaying as a professional.”

She says it’s fun. I hate liars, cosplayers, and professionals. I like artists, authenticity, real-ones. She gets nervous that she bailed on me, that our plans got mixed up. I tell her:

She describes “a bunch of analysts freaking out abt how do we get people to turn down china aligned financial incentives.” I don’t understand. If she hates it, why pursue that empty, superficial life? I want to save her from this fakery. I want her to be with me.

She’s socializing, drinking at bars. Could I ever be with an extroverted girl like that? Maybe it would be good for me. But I get exhausted and cranky. I need peace and quiet and space away from city lights and smog.

She tells me “King of Comedy” is her favorite movie, and the fact that it’s playing in the bar is a “very good sign.” It is an omen. She says, “It’s like Joker 2019 but it’s true art.”

I wrote an article on why I hate the joker movie and the joker himself. Because I love the joker, I also hate the joker, because I hate that part of myself. The joker appeals to the part of me that feels like a sad sack of shit, toxic and self-hating. However, I aspire to be heroic and strong, and that is why I hate the joker. I am at war with myself.

She doesn’t listen.

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And while this is always described as a bad thing, I believe I could use some heart-hardening. Maybe, at the least, I’d like a heart which is solid.

When a relationship undergoes catastrophic failure, this is similar to a death. There are stages of grief, which I don’t have memorized, but I assume they include bargaining, sadness, and anger, all of which I have experienced.

It is interesting to me how our legal system regards a massage over clothes to be “rape,” but breaking up with someone is free-game. Personally, I’ve been molested by the TSA, and it was fine. An ugly fat man grabbed my penis and squeezed it, then let go. I was quite furious for a few hours — then I got over it.

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I filled the void with dozens of hours of intellectually stimulating interviews, but missed physical embrace.

I was touch deprived, not sexually, but emotionally. I had phone-friends, but our conversations could not replicate presence. I didn’t want to exchange ideas; I wanted an electro-magnetic connection more primordial and primitive than language could provide. Because I am already too wordy, a wordless love is what I needed most.

My problem is fear. I am a perfectionist, and my all-or-nothing mindset strangles human connection.

My biggest barrier isn’t being selective in the quality of my friends. Sure, I am attracted to intelligence, beauty, a deep emotional life, and a sense of spirituality, purpose, and destiny. But my standards for others are not so high that I couldn’t engage with the top 1% and meet new people on a regular basis.

My biggest obstacle is my fear of initiation, failure, and rejection. The most sure-fire way to prevent rejection is to never try. To protect myself, I only ever reach out to people who first show an interest in me. Approaching a stranger at a party, and watching him turn his face to engage someone else, is a crushing, draining defeat, sinking me into a pit of despair.

What’s more exhausting than being obviously rejected is to be subtly rejected. I don’t mind being yelled at and criticized — conflict energizes me. But at a gathering, being ignored politely is an intolerable ambiguity. I feel like a dog whose training has been confused, who desperately wants to please his master, but who does not know how, whose master abandons him on the side of the road. I’d rather be kicked or yelled at. Better to be hated than ignored.

Without continuous growth, life shrinks. People move; conflicts arise; friendships fade. Most people overcome social attrition by meeting new people, new friends, mixing into new social scenes. But because I fear ambiguity, preferring the explicit and unambiguous screaming of social media, I found myself in the Winter of 2023 whittled down to nearly nothing.

It was at this low point when I turned to Substack, fully throwing myself into a project which paid $4 an hour, working 40 hours a week, 2,000 hours a year. I believed that if I was good enough, if I proved myself, then someday I could use this platform to make friends again. Thousands would subscribe to me, they would initiate, and then I wouldn’t have to be so afraid to reach out.

Without male support, every girlfriend turns into a de facto therapist. Not only does she need to be a sexual and romantic partner, but she also needs to pick up the slack and fill in the shoes of all my absent male friends. If I were a quiet, calm, serene personality, this might be doable. But under the strain of endless neurotic complaints, even the most empathetic woman is worn thin. The therapeutic burden becomes too heavy, cutting off the bloodflow of romance, turning it purple and bruised.

My lack of hugs, laughs, and brotherly back slaps, therefore, places strain on my intimacy with women. In a vicious cycle, loneliness begets stress, and stress leads to breakups.

Every relationship became bogged down with too many words. I tried dating European women, because the language barrier helped hide my insecurity and limit my whining. Low IQ American women were also oblivious to my problems, but I did not find them attractive.

Men are often caricatured as being unable to share their emotions and feelings. I have the opposite problem. Trauma-dumping excessively on the girls I loved and trusted created a endless emotional storm that prevented intimacy. They tried to wade through my mudslide of oversharing, but it was too much.

Exhausted, I quit seeking true love. I distracted myself with the most superficial flirting: narcissistic fuck-boy attention whoring. Tired of verbal diarrhea, I resigned myself to callous caddishness.

Then, all of a sudden, in the past month, I was hit with a torrent of activity, a flood in the Sahara Desert.

One after another,

I met 30 people — engaging, entertaining, attractive people. My most sincere wish was to make one new friend this year — now I had goyim in abundance!

One girl gave me everything — compliments, introductions, affirmations — the affection I lacked for years suddenly returned. But I was terrified and overwhelmed.

Here I was, achieving all my dreams, a complete inversion of many lonely nights. Instead of being neglected, I was embraced. Instead of being ignored, I was attended to. Instead of being isolated, I was overflowing! I should have been grateful, but I was exhausted.

I found myself in Striver City, inundated with one stranger after another, constantly introduced to more and more people who knew less and less about me, being dragged around social scenes like a rag doll, wondering what I was doing here, wishing, ungratefully, I was alone.

Keep in mind, I’m not speaking about my subscribers, readers, or people who truly understand me on a spiritual level. I’m talking about strangers at parties, friends of friends, whose lives revolved around resumes and soirées and getting drunk at literary events and self-indulgent autofiction sex stories.1

As I grew more distant from my subscribers, and fell deeper into the rabbit holes of Striver City, every stranger I met seemed to care more and more about money and less about me. My value shrank as their ambition grew. They looked at me as if I were a potted cactus, and I began to play the part.

These people’s lives were consumed by Palladium, Palantir, Peter Thiel, crypto, MAGA, Bukele — Russophiles whose ideologies I find revolting, but who I, for some reason, found myself forced to rub shoulders with. I didn’t feel I had the right, after being alone for so long, to say,

I was jealous, enamored, disgusted and made small by big, important, famous, and prestigious institutions, Ivy League colleges, Dimes Square and Sovereign House, things I had only read about in the New York Times...

Many of these people were nice and kind, but I still felt hatred.

If a troll lives under a bridge for long enough, he begins to hate the sunlight. And if an angel lives in the light for long enough, he begins to hate the rats scurrying around down in the sewer, eating trash and chattering incessantly. Am I the troll, or the angel of light looking down on the rats? Perhaps, a bit of both.

To let off steam, I tried to write an article about one exceptionally, infuriatingly hilarious incident, but it was shot down by my host. “She’ll kill me!” she hissed. If I said anything offensive, the social dominoes would fall; we would be uninvited from circles and spheres and parties; essentially, we would be dead.

But what if what I wrote was funny, true, and excellent? Isn’t my job to pillory this world of ugliness, and revolt against conformist, superficial, striver mediocrity? Am I the asshole for rudely ripping your friends to shreds? Or am I a hero, trying to save you from these cretins?

Why the hell do you read me, if this is the life you enjoy? Why drag me here, in front of these people, to be looked down upon, with my hands tied behind my back? Do you understand anything I have ever written, at all? Is this your picture of “elitism”? Or do you understand it all too well, and enjoy the idea of neutering, castrating, and domesticating me?

The Russian

The Russian’s life was hell. He droned on in a thick Slavic accent about “these Jews.” Before he would tell me what he did for work, he asked if I was a cop (as if I would tell him). His money came from buying and re-selling gold, jewels, and watches — stolen, I assume.

He was an allosemite — all he could think about was Jews, loving and hating them at the same time. He admired them as fellow scam artists, but hated them for not accepting him as one of their own.

It reminded me of Runescape in 2007, prior to the Grand Exchange, when players would buy and sell Yew Logs. They would buy at 30 GP, then resell at 35 GP. Move enough Yew Logs, and you could make millions this way. I always thought of it as a “dishonorable” way to play the game. I don’t know where or how this idea came to me, but it seemed like the most natural and intuitive thing in the world.

The purpose of life (even in this silly game) is to create meaning; things of value; not “merchanting” or skimming off the top of the work of others. When I became a libertarian the following year, it was out of hatred of parasitism. Criminals, Runescape merchants, and government bureaucrats all did the same thing — stealing from the productive, and enriching themselves with financial trickery.

It would be one thing if this Russian immigrant got any enjoyment whatsoever out of his sordid work. But even he seemed to hate every second of it. I had to wonder: what sort of rat-like creature is this, who forces himself into misery for the love of money I’ve been that rat before, slaving away at a job that was meaningless and made me hate myself.

If this Russian immigrant was ugly, I might have felt less bad about his decisions. It would be a fittting life for an ugly face. But tragically, he was very handsome. If I were a woman I would have fantasized about him kissing me... But he reduced himself to rat-life.

I do not hate him, but I hated his sin. I hated the fact that, once I left my subscribers behind and got sucked into this alternative universe of money-grubbing strivers, rat-people were the only types I seemed to meet; people whose lives were concerned chiefly with the material, mundane, and the morose; pitiful, trifling nonsense. The more time I spent with these people, the more I felt I was being sucked into their void, dragged down into their mindset.

This Russian fellow is one small example, and maybe even the best of the bunch. I tried to write about others, but I was shut down and censored — don’t you know that it’s rude to write about people that you meet? (I wish my blog were kept a secret!)

Well yes, I know that I am rude, but don’t you know it’s also rude to waste your life buying and re-selling rolexes? Don’t you know that’s rude to GOD, who loves you and created you, and expects much more out of you than a youth dedicated to so-called “Jewish scams”? Have you no poetry? Have you no self-respect? Have you no soul?

But I didn’t stand up for God, and this is where I began to sink into despair. In holding my tongue, I became a silent accomplice to sin.

There is a different way to look at all of this. Maybe I am the rat, and they are the brave heroes, sacrificing themselves for the most valuable thing of all: money! They are Randian heroes of Capitalism, creating value, and I am merely diddling and mentally masturbating on my little blog. I don’t write “poetry.” I write screeds, or rehash hot takes; political slop. In thirty years, their hard work will have provided them with beautiful furniture and beautiful children, and what will I have?

But either way you look at it, someone must come away as a rat. I cannot sit in the presence of money-grubbing status-whores and find peace. Either I’m the fool for failing them, or they are the fools for failing me.

I don’t always feel this way, of course. I’ve met rich people, and they come up to me, and they say,

“I think what you are doing is fantastic. I love it. It is very valuable.”

When they do this, my inferiority complex fades, and we become equals. No longer do I feel the need to prove myself; it is proven. I can respect them for taking a different path. So long as they can see the value in me, I can see the value in them.

But this Russian watch-monger has no clue who I am. He wouldn’t know if I tried to explain it to him. Neither of us would know where to begin. The closest we get to a political topic is when he says,

I imagine, briefly, what life would be like for him if I were dictator. What would happen to little Russian scammers under a truly vicious NATO Empire? Would we tolerate insults from petty peddlers sneaking into our black market, spitting on our idealism? What would happen to them?

I’ve had many Russian friends. Ethnically, I like the way that many Russians look, and their language. But the entire point of my worldview is that America doesn’t stand for jack shit anymore. We have devolved into a nation of money-grubbing shop keepers, suppressing the the great world-conquering spirit of Washington, Lincoln, Wilson, and Roosevelt.

If this Russian came to America to do biomedical research, or programming, or literally anything productive or creative or innovative, I could give him a pass on his cynical chauvinism. He is correct: Ukraine is a deeply flawed country with a whole host of problems. I have been to Ukraine, and I did not not think to myself,

“Wow, this is like a western European country with many great accomplishments, I would like to live here.”

The ungratefulness of immigrants is not entirely their fault. We, as a country, do not enforce the party line. Vance yells at Zelensky — our political system is a rotten, incoherent mess. There is no order or discipline. Idealism is undermined by scammers at the highest level, trading Polymarket bets on the next war crime.

Liberalism and toleration are virtues when practiced within the system. Take, for example, a Jew living next door to a Christian. The two have different beliefs, but the Jew invites the Christian over for a Shabbat dinner, and the Christian invites the Jew over to a barbeque. This is all very nice. But when it comes to these larger geopolitical goals, I wish we had more idealism. Less “take the oil” jingoism, and more “defend Europe” idealism.

This Russian was only one among many, and I only chose him because he seemed so unconcerned with anything political. He would regard my ranting as incomprehensible insanity without meaning, and be too confused to be offended. He feels himself to be “above” such things. For this gopnik, politics is just a distraction from making money.

Since I am limiting myself to speaking about the Russian, I am probably portraying things more politically than they really were. It’s not that he was pro-Russia; it’s that he was cynical about anything besides money — and he was already quite cynical about money.

“Ukraine should just give up and roll over, because it’s good for business and making money. America should stop supporting them, because that would be good for business and making money.”

That was the spirit I encountered, over and over: pure unadulterated cynicism, coming from the youth of Striver City, who should be in the prime of their idealism, but who are wasting it all to “make it,” whatever that means.

The Russian was just the tip of the iceberg of a bunch of monger-grubbing, status-whoring zoomers who only seemed to care about advancing their careers, their resumes, their material interests, and all of them seemed slightly antisemitic and Russophilic and all the other horrible things I hate.

If I had only met one person like this, I would have been ok. I’m not the type of person to blow up over a singular political disagreement. But when I become trapped in a cauldron of toxic cynicism and I cannot escape it, I begin to ask myself, “what the hell am I doing here?” Unfortunately, as you guessed, it was for a girl. I was sitting down, shutting up, auto-cucking, self-domesticating, following along and betraying my principles and internally longhousing for a girl.

I wish I could tell more stories in this vein, and this was the thing that hurt the most — that every time I tried to tell my story, I had my hand slapped down, “please don’t write about my friends.” I was neutered from expressing myself in my creative outlet. I lost my one coping mechanism, and it ate me up inside.

One of the people I met was a former white nationalist, but visibly non-white, who said something like,

“I could never be a part of something where I wouldn’t be at the top.”

Everything is a status game, for these types.

The statement disturbed me greatly, for a number of reasons. Idealism is not a status game where you min-max your personal standing at the expense of everyone else. Idealism is a function of true belief. If you believe that white nationalism is good, then you should pursue it regardless of how it affects you personally. How can you claim to have been a white nationalist, but understand nothing of the virtue of self-sacrifice?

Savitri Devi went to jail because she really believed Hitler was God. Crazy, sure, but idealistic nonetheless. The worst part of this story is that this former-white-nationalist, who dumped the ideology because “I realized I couldn’t be at the top because I’m not purely white,” was somehow a big former fan of Savitri Devi. A crime!

I’ve never read Savitri Devi, but you don’t have to read her to understand the moral of the story. If you believe in something, you fight for it, even at the cost of your own life. This is not a status game. We are not trying to “get that Thiel money.” We are not selling used watches. We are not sucking up to the party-boss to get networking connections. We are not inventing a fake startup and then selling it at the first opportunity for “resume-maxing.” If that is what “we” are doing, then I don’t want to be a part of “we.”

I have more respect for someone who worships Hitler as a God than all of these right-wing grifters. I am viscerally, morally, and spiritually disgusted by them. It disgusts me to think that I occupy the same planet as these people. Let alone a city, or a country. But to share friendships with them leaves me disgusted with myself. Why are they attracted to me? Have I communicated my ideals so poorly that they think this is acceptable? Do they think I am such a coward that I will bend and conform to their machinations so easily? In my silence, I fear they are right.

Does the Mona Lisa get uglier as ugly people look upon it? If so, will I become uglier if I earn the love and respect of money-grubbing status-whores?

What sin have I committed to have end up in Striver City? Why am I so afraid to raise an impassioned cry? Why do I sit here and seethe and judge, but no words come out?

As the days drone on and wear me down, at one of these social events, I went completely numb. Emotionally, I shut down. I was in shock. I could barely communicate. I could barely look at the people around me.

It was an Irish pub, and I was staring at the TV, which was playing commercials with the sound turned off. The commercial was for some generic prescription drug, with stock footage of old people holding hands and walking dogs. My eyes were glued to the screen because I couldn’t bear to acknowledge the people around me, because I was so disgusted with myself.

Greed

It is wrong to live your life in pursuit of money. Jesus was correct when he said that the rich man must give it all away. If your goal is to create a great company, a great product, or a great service, and you own stocks which explode in value, then there is nothing wrong with the resulting luxury or hedonism. If you did something to earn it, then enjoy the fruits of your labor. But never, NEVER should you EVER view the gain of wealth as the ultimate goal of life. This is a firm conviction of mine that I have always felt, no matter what political formula I felt best suited it.

This doesn’t mean that I endorse communism, or poverty as a virtue. Communism merely obscures the outward expression of inner greed. A communist system will always have ranks in the bureaucracy, and those instinctual money-grubbers who would otherwise be making money will instead focus their efforts on climbing the ranks of the bureaucracy. It is the same attitude and essentially the same outcome.

My problem isn’t that some people are rich, and others are poor, or that some profit while others live in squalor. My problem is with the BOURGEOIS attitude, whose chief concern is money. The attitude is wrong — the system in which it expresses itself is irrelevant.

Capitalism is superior in rewarding real value much better than other systems. In a feudal system, the only way to make money is through the guild system. Accordingly, the money-grubber works even harder to infiltrate and rise to the top. Feudalism doesn’t solve the problem of greed; it just makes everyone poorer and more desperate.

The optimal system is one in which we distribute all our resources to idealists, innovators, inventors, and researchers, in which Kshatriya and Brahmin rule, and the Vaishya barely exist at all.

I can opine all day on which system is better or worse for allocating resources, but that is not the point here. On an individual level, no matter the system, one should strive to create things of real value, and avoid grifting, status-climbing, and money-chasing as an end unto itself.

I created 900 hours of free content on Youtube before I ever felt comfortable asking for support — this is how firmly I oppose the pursuit of money for its own sake. When I wake up in the morning, I do not think, “how can I make more money?” Instead, I think,

Money is a distant goal, down at the bottom, in the trash heap. I think about making money in the same way that I think about producing bowel movements — it is something gross and private and shameful, a practical reality which does not belong at the dinner table.

If I were to be constipated or in a state of sickness, that would do no good, and there is also a bare minimum of money that I need to be productive. But beyond that bare minimum, it is not good to obsess over these things. Obsessing over money does not produce beauty, and only spreads misery.

Read me carefully: I am not endorsing poverty, or denouncing luxury, hedonism, the fruits of capitalism, or the benefits of a free market. I am speaking morally, at the level of the individual, regarding intention, and not consequence. If someone were to offer me a million dollars in exchange for nothing, of course I would take it, just as Jesus took perfume. There is no sin in taking money. The sin is in the reductive desire, greed, which strangles idealism and higher love. There is nothing wrong with using money, spending it, and enjoying it. The evil part is in killing yourself and your soul to obtain it.

The great challenge is honesty.

I desperately want to be honest; it is more important than anything that I be honest. Yet, it is a truly difficult thing to achieve.

There is a great deal of money, status, and sex to be gained in dishonesty. I could be living in up in Striver City right now, gaining the love and admiration of many, if I had just lied to fit in. No one knows who I am, and apparently, no one cares about the ideals I believe in. Go along to get along. It’s easy!

Being cruel and insulting, spitting out my venom of being “disgusted” and feeling smug, however, is not a shortcut to honesty either. It is covering up a much deeper and self-serving lie.

Am I saying mean and cruel things so that I can feel morally superior? Am I just a poor hater, jealous of these rich successful young people, coping behind a moralistic veneer? Or am I hiding my power level to avoid hurting people’s feelings? There are so many emotional biases and so much self-interest that hides the truth, it’s like walking down a mine field. The way to the truth is narrow, while the way to error is wide.

That whole dinner with the Russian watch-seller, he was pulling his hair out. He simply did not enjoy his life, and I regard that as a great sin. No handsome young man should ever drive himself into such pains for the sake of mere money. Because I love beautiful young people, I hate to see them suffer the sins of striverism. I wish to free them, because deep down, I love them.

This is the most difficult part of all. I am afraid to say,

But I know this would only aggravate him. Who am I, to be so patronizing, after he has been pursuing this singular goal for so long? He tells me that even at the age of 13, he was already trading crypto. He claims that he has some big dream of what he will do with all this money (although he never reveals it). But he also seems like a nervous, anxious wreck, whose greed drives him to an early grave. A pity.

I feel guilty for not speaking up. I wish I knew how to, without sounding so insulting and demeaning. I wish I had a calm and confident spirit, which could say plainly,

That would be very wise. If he were to dismiss me, the sin would be on his head, not mine. But I never told him this, and therefore, the sin is on my head. If I know something is wrong, and I do not speak out against it, then I am a passive participant. I am complicit, and I have sinned out of fear.

There were many more cases where this occurred. Someone was living an evil life, but their social status far exceeded mine by many multiples, because they were richer, more handsome, more successful, with more friends and women and power. My conscience ate me up, I felt sick to my stomach, and I began to dissociate, to turn off all my emotions and feelings, and I stared off into space, numb to my own soul.2

With great power comes great responsibility. I ran away. I wish I had the boldness and confidence to speak the truth.

Now, weeks later, I do so after the fact, in cowardice, so that no one will be corrected, nothing will be fixed. I am sorry that I did not speak my conscience.

I am anti-social because I am judgmental.

When I meet people, high and low, I judge them. Other people must suspend judgment, or hide it, and move on. I am not comfortable; I get stuck, and I can’t escape the nagging feeling that I am neglecting a duty, until the nagging becomes so loud and incessant that I will either explode, and I dissociate. I become silent and grim, I give one-word answers, I seem to not even be there anymore. I retreat deep inside myself, like a turtle inside his shell, afraid to cause a scene.

The truth is that all of these money-grubbing, resume-building, status-climbing strivers were all very nice and charitable to me; none of them did me any harm. I hate to leave them and slam the door and scream “good riddance!” I hate to be so harsh and judgmental. But if I turn off all my emotions, and betray all my ideals and values, this does no one any good, because numbness is just another form of anti-sociality. Wouldn’t it be better to have some conflict than to run away?

I love people, for their good qualities and attributes, but I am also very critical. Sometimes all that comes out of me is criticism, but I only criticize those I love. This need to critique often feels like hatred. But I don’t really hate anyone. I might be annoyed, but my hatred is just a projection of an inner feeling of impotence. I only want to change them because I believe they are worth changing. I believe they are worth fighting for. I want to change them because I love them.

I see this beautiful Russian man, and I want to see him live for more than just money. I want him to put his efforts toward something creative or innovative or artistic or scientific. Let someone else sell the Rolex watches — or as he would put it, “let these Jews sell watches.” Life is short. Do something that brings beauty into the world. Fall in love with passionate greatness.

Running Away

I stopped writing this for a moment to get up and take piss, which reminded me that my genitals exist. As I pissed into the sink, I thought to myself,

As I finished pissing, examining my penis, I realized in brief flashes, almost subliminally, all the socio-sexual opportunities I lost in running away from Striver City, leaving all the hot women behind, and retreating to my Holy Turtle Cave.

In a sudden spike of fear, regret, and loneliness, I started to fantasize about starting the Tinder Catfishing Machine back up again. I thought about purchasing several smartphones, and using them to create exotic dating profiles of world-travelers and Renaissance men, plopping them down in a college town in North Dakota where the women are restless and bored, and watching the likes come raking in. Then I would regale them with a false hope that I, the world-traveler, would sweep them off their feet and save them from boredom.

As I became erect fantasizing about my scheme, I felt guilty, knowing deep down that this is a glib superficial scam. It is only a shadow, a pale imitation of the real thing, worse than a stolen Rolex. Why am I not a world traveler? Why I am not sweeping women off their feet in real life? Why do I only fantasize about it?

This is my problem. The reason I become so judgmental of others, so disgusted, so frustrated with their behavior, their moneygrubbing, their striverism, is because I am not doing my job. During my three weeks of travel, I barely did any work at all. My brain was screaming at me: stop traveling! You must become passionately great! Stop trying to meet people, and start writing!

And I said,

And my brain said,

I won the battle against my brain — but my brain won the war. Although I was able to continue meeting people, as week one became two, and two weeks became three, I eventually drove myself into a miserable state. In this miserable state, I began to hate everyone around me, despite the fact that they were quite excellent, friendly, beautiful, intelligent, charitable people. In my misery, I ran away and acted a fool, losing them forever.

I am not in control of my organs, let alone my own thoughts. Just as my penis becomes erect without my consent, raping me with every boner, so too does my mind think thoughts without my consent, mind-raping me with every impulse.

This conscious ego of mine is just along for the ride — trapped between the id of the penis and the fear of subsconscious mind. I should be able to control these organs, but in reality, they control me. I am like a rider on a horse, but this horse has no reins; it goes where it pleases. I can yell, kick, and scream, but I cannot get off the horse without coming tumbling down onto the ground, and getting trampled in the process.

Instead of panicking, freaking out, or dissociating, perhaps I can communicate to this horse with whisperings and suggestions. I need to know what the horse wants, and where it is going. It wants not just “women” in some bodily sense, but it specifically wants female attention, and it wants to embody the archetype of a world-traveler. It wants to work hard, every day, for at least eight hours. It needs to go to the gym every day, even if that requires social confrontation to stop the chit-chat.

These are difficult requirements to fulfill, but it’s better to be honest than to ignore them. Ignoring them leads to falling off and getting trampled — the desires don’t just go away if I fold my arms and pout. Instead, they hit the big red panic button of a cortisol spike; I get insomnia, I am infected with catastrophic thinking, and I explode, or retreat.

I met a Buddhist during my travels, who was the most quiet of my subscribers. By the time I met him, I was thoroughly exhausted and unable to engage with him on the deepest level. However, I see now that he was sent to me as a prank, to send a message.

I told him that I did not think the purpose of life was to cease suffering, but if I did, I would simply join a monastery. He shrugged his shoulders. The joke was on me!

I have many goals, but I contradict those goals all the time. I have barely done any world traveling in the past decade... and I never tell people how strict and important my work is, or my gym schedule. This is the reason why I am alone: I am too afraid to communicate my needs to others, afraid that they won’t respect me. In my silence, I expect people to read my mind, and when they don’t, resentment builds. Maintaining relationships becomes impossible.

The “world traveler” identity can be filed under “look-maxing lite.” Becoming a world-traveler is a resume-building technique to get in women’s pants — to snag their attention and boost to my self-esteem. The deeper problem remains. “World traveler” is a superficial representation of a deeper, more mysterious, almost impossibly obscure problem of self-valuation.

Writing work is simpler, but it requires a dictatorial, tyrannical, fanatical dogmatism.

Of course I could always violate the timer, but as a matter of principle, I need to be strict with such things. Otherwise I end up hating myself, which then externalizes onto others, and no one is happy.

Conclusion

I share these things not just as a therapy session (although I thank my readership for so patiently listening, I know only a third of you like the personal essays), but because this is a common occurrence, especially for men.

Men underwork themselves, because we equate all work together. Selling watches is not the same kind of labor as writing. Selling watches for eight hours is dreadful; writing for eight hours is splendid. Men underestimate the salubrious power of meaningful work on the soul; we neglect it.

When I had a “real job” I neglected meaningful work entirely. This is how most people live their lives — neglecting what is meaningful, and building up a great deal of self-hatred, which then expresses itself in all sorts of nasty ways, masochistically or sadistically. In my case, it comes as sharp bursts of disgust, savagely critical and judgmental. Then, when I realize how cruel I have become, how I have judged others unjustly, how I only focused on the negative and ignored the beautiful aspects of the people I critique, I start banging against the walls of my brain, asking,

It takes me quite a while to figure it out, because my brain gets so damaged by all the emotional banging-around that it gets hard to see things straight.

I thank my audience for helping me see things straight, although I know it took some time for me to get there.

I walked into the DMV, where I was greeted by armed security guards. A woman told me I had to make an appointment online. Can I just make appointment with you? Nope, you must comply with the process. Infuriating.

The cafe I’m sitting in is actually a restaurant, although the interior is clinical, industrial, and spacious. It feels more like a cafe to me. But it’s clearly not a cafe, because an aboriginal white person with a nose ring just said,

“Heyyy, i’m so sorry, but like, if you’re not going to order anything, i’m going to have to ask you to leave…

I’ve been sitting here for exactly 90 minutes, and no one came to me with a menu, so… maybe you should be apologizing to me? I ask for a menu though, because I’m tired of fighting women.

You can’t get everything you want. You have to compromise. Today I’m just going to pay the $10 and try to finish my taxes. I’m doing my taxes in April this year. Usually I start in February or March, but I’ve been busy!

Taking the chicken tenders from this broad-and-flat nosed whyte woman is cracking me up. The comedy of it all… Why is it so funny to me?

There’s some 17 year old Argentinian boy who finds my April Fool’s Hitler-apologia to be heart-rending and sincere… Non-Zionism wants me to get a real job… Peter Foreshaw Brookes is trying to stage an intervention… The RMV wants me to “make an appointment online…” Turbotax is asking me how much I spent on pens and pencils this year. For my “writing job.”

They didn’t even give me a napkin for my chicken tenders. What kind of restaurant is this? It’s all so ridiculous to me.

From now on, I should only eat with one of three utensils:

• Plastic forks

• Chopsticks

• Spoons

I have PTSD from my fork experience.

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1. I stayed with a Papuan — an archaic bewildering robust Australian aboriginal, not a neotenous Homo Sapien. She had no cellphone, and she was freaking out about the power going out. I found myself in this situation because I was promised a free place to stay — then, at the last moment, the promise was pulled away from under my feet, so I had to stay with a Papuan lady. Her schizophrenia added to my disorientation. I trust nothing and no one. I am totally alone.

2. I was staying up all night to restart my sleep schedule. At Anytime Fitness, I called the Cinephile for an hour at 6am. If I had a camera crew, this scene would be in the documentary. The Cinephile is like me; afraid of doctors and medical problems. But we have many physical advantages. He is even taller and more handsome than I am.

• January 23rd: I sent the Cinephile a very silly picture of me, opening my mouth wide, my long hair wildly curling around my skull, with four double chins. The skin on my face is simultaneously tight and loose, like a Jim Carey mask. I’m no longer young anymore.

• On January 24th: I went for a swim and got a small sunburn. The lifeguard yelled at me for swimming out too far. I was staying in a hostel with an Indian frat bro, a loser named “Hunter,” and a fat old guy whose girlfriend of 20 years kicked him out. He worked as a furniture mover, picking things up and putting them down for 20 years, at the company of his ex’s dad. When he lost his girlfriend, he lost his job too. I loved that man. We were both profoundly sad and dumb together. I gave him my number before I left, but he never texted me. Goodbye.

• January 28th: I started the editor’s group while sitting in the prescription drug pharmacy section of Publix, eating my pound of scrambled eggs from the “salad bar.” This was stimulated by Isaac Simpson, my temporary nemesis. I appreciate Isaac for forcing me to do better. I decided to think things through interactively and iteratively, as a process, experimental and emotional, open to conflict and mistakes.

• January 30th: I was sexually blackmailed in an Airbnb. I looked up to see a camera looking down on me. I felt morally bad for masturbating. Karma is using this incident to indict my immoral behavior — catfishing. My coping mechanism is to over intellectualize and to see “the big picture,” by writing an article. Turns out: writing an article did help. There was no camera. It was all in my mind.

• February 3rd: I spoke with my first “editor.” I was nervous and, in my head, overly critical, perceiving everything negatively. But this was irrational and cruel. By repressing my criticism, everything worked out.

• February 5th: I was depressed. The Cinephile met with my nemesis, my lover, my hater, and my dad, everything rolled into one. I gave him a sarcastic thumbs up. I was jealous and lonely. I said:

• February 6th: I spend 1 hour doing a bar hang, then I workout, stretch, and shower, which comes out to two hours at the gym every day.

• February 11th: I get excited. There’s so much I want to do, so many articles I want to write, so much exercise, despite the hernia and bloating, so much money I want so I can live in a nice place and not a bad one, so much acceptance and conversation, so much approval and success. I’m overwhelmed with desire yet tired.

• February 12th: I was annoyed in the grocery store with an interview request I could not accept, because I did not have internet at home.

• February 13th: Over-stressed, I turned out of the gym parking lot, and crashed my car into little concrete barrier, ripping off the wheel well. I missed an interview with Spencer. I misquoted Rob Henderson. I missed the gym. I am bloated from bacon. I have zero bitches on Valentine’s Day. I feel fat and lazy. The cops are trying to catch me on the road — one day after I got my headlight fixed, thank God. I need to somehow overcome everything. I need to imagine the worst possible outcome and overcome it.

• I’m being shaken down for $20, months after the fact, for some digital work I requested which was never even done. Infuriating.

• February 16th: I crashed out. No sleep. I’m in the Airbnb with the fat used-car salesman, full wifi. He is fat, alone, wearing glasses, always giving a goofy smile. He calls me a vampire and asks for my life story. I hate strivers and salesmen. I hate materialists.

Then, a whirlwind. I end up planning my travels up the coast, and I succeed, and everything goes well.

• March 26th: I tell a lesbian my story. She says that I should publish my essay. I blame her for the fallout and accuse her of giving me bad advice. I scapegoat her for my disastrous decision. But it’s my fault and my responsibility.

I am an anti-employed workaholic.

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I am confused. I am emotional. I just want to... be nice? I want to ... love and be loved? I want to... give things a chance? I want to try? I don’t know.

I keep swinging back and forth. One part of me wants to completely forget it ever happened, to be alone, to be strong, to be powerful, to write endlessly, to be the wolf. Another part of me wants to be the dog, which I guess means she is my master and I have to live by her rules, the rules of being a boyfriend.

I feel stupid. This is a lose-lose situation. Be with her, and I lose. Be without her, and I lose. There is no winning.

Maybe none of this matters. I wish I could go now, tonight, right now, no more waiting, no more hesitation, I just want to ... I want her to reject me! I don’t want to be left thinking about how I messed up, I want her to make the decision...

Which is stupid, stupid, stupid, why?... She didn’t read my articles today. I am obsessed with her, she is obsessed with me, why can’t we communicate? Why can’t we be in love? I need some kind of ritual, a funeral... Ah Reader, you’ve known me for a few years now, have I been like this before? Am I being melodramatic?

I don’t think it’s possible to get advice. I’ve tried to get advice and nothing works. I just violently swing from one extreme to another:

1. FORGET about her, devalue her, pretend she doesn’t exist, stop checking up on her, stop stalking her, stop, go back in time, wipe your memory, induce a concussion, induce a coma, step over it, stop being a pussy, beat yourself into a pump, hate yourself, smash your head with a baseball bat until you can’t think, split your skull on the concrete and wake up in a hospital full of drugs, fuck prostitutes until your dick doesn’t work anymore, get out, escape.

2. TRY, try again, try one more time, I know they say that “breakups are forever” and I know it will never work, she will never accept you, you will never be happy together, but please just give me one more night, I just want to say sorry, please let me hold her one more time, I’m weak, I’m just a slug, I have no membrane, let me spill out, let my heart dissolve into juice, I want to become a puddy of juice on your floor, I want to seep into her floorboards and cover her walls in my sappy red honey, I want to get stuck to her and leave a fragrant smell that never goes away, I want to be with her forever, I don’t care about anything anymore not even writing, I give up, I give in, I surrender.

3. No no no you must be STRONG, women only respect strength, you have to be strong, take the redpill, looksmax, calculate, you have to be powerful, women only respect power, if you don’t pretend to be strong she will resent you for being weak, she already hates you, she already smells your fear, you have to maintain frame, you have to regain dominance, remember what happened to Worst Boyfriend? he got obsessed with that girl, Celine, and she refused him, she met him one last time and refused him, he fucked it up, he was abandoned, it all failed, it was all for nothing, worthless, love is worthless, all that exists is power, you have to conquer her, you have to survive, this is your captain speaking, The captain says you have to survive and be powerful, never let your guard down, survive.

4. It’s all bullshit, what matters is inside, you can pretend to be strong but it doesn’t matter, what matters is your identity, where is GOD? you believe in God, right? You pretend to believe in God, right? You want there to be a God, a hero, a Heavenly Father looking down on you, you want God within you, yes? Correct, you love God right? Yes, with tears in your eyes, you love him, yes? You want to be with him? You want to make him proud? and your dead dad, who you failed for years, who you did nothing for him, he was a failure too, but he also succeeded, will you avenge his death? Will you avenge his spiritual death, his torment, all the years wasted? What did he do? What will you do? Are you a COWARD? what do you fear? Why are you afraid? What are you afraid of? what does God want you to do? does God want you with this woman? Does he want you to forget her? Or does God want you to be powerful, not as a dumb trick, not as a PUA mind control technique, but does God want you to recognize his power within you? That God lives within you, and he acts within you, and he is the source of all beauty, all truth, all goodness, here is there within you!

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I wrote an April Fool’s post, for fun. I was in the editor’s groupchat scheming, gaming it out, conspiring. At first, I wrote it to be so over-the-top, that was obviously a joke. Then I got insidious…

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They gossip about drugs, boys, and mental illness. I stare at their faces and lacy bras, fantasizing about breaking out of this prison.

…

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He told t…

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