Author: xman11422

My Anger

I’ve been battling with depression since I was a teenager. and it hasn’t gone away, even well into my 30s. I would drink heavily to try to subdue it, but it is only temporary and seems to make things worse. I usually ruminate over the same angry thoughts day and night. I’ve tried working out, but it is also another temporary fix (albeit more healthy than drinking). So i decided to write this post as a way to clear my head. I also feel this will be helpful to anyone out there who is going through what I’m going through.

Being a man in this city comes with an almost certain level of anger. You are not as cared about anymore, you are expected to be strong, and your problems are not taken as seriously. I see it on the streets, men who are on the corner drinking or doing whatever drugs. Doubting what the right decisions are to make. I’m starting to believe you, as a man, need to look out for yourself first. Making sure your finances, your health, and peace of mind are put before everything else.

As I get older, dating seems like a waste of time. Women look to take but give very little in return, leaving you bitter. Society will quickly imprison you, but slowly help when needed. I have contemplated suicide, but I don’t have the will to do it. I guess I gotta stay strong and roll with the punches because, seriously, this modern age isn’t making it easy.

I lift weights because even though I’m not mentally strong, maybe at least I can be physically strong. Life becomes a metaphor for prison, working out and reading books, because they can do everything materially from but a least you’ll have your mind and body.

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A rant on our gender and masculinity

A few years back, I had the pleasure of reading “The Rational Male” by Rollo Tomasi. This book essentially changed my life(that’s saying a lot because I have read hundreds of books in my life). The book is essentially a user guide to female nature and is considered a bible among the red-pilled community. One point that I took to heart while reading the book was how solipsistic women were by nature. Now, many would view this to be the sexiest, downright even misogynistic, but in evolutionary terms, this made perfect sense. For a lot of people, they just can’t make peace with biological facts and political correctness. Men and Women have fundamental differences that are the result of eons of evolution. That women would, by nature, be solipsistic, thinking of only themselves, makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint. Women( as still the case today) bear the brunt of rearing children. As well as the risky situation where they go through almost a year of gestation. This would lead to women generally being more egotistical and prioritizing themselves and their children above everything else. This is perfectly fine from an evolutionary as well as a historical standpoint. But this mode of being runs into many problems in our modern times.

Men, almost universally(with exceptions, of course), have been in a position of power. And with great power comes great responsibility (as the famous comic book quote stated). So in this scenario, I believe it made sense for certain things to be deferred to women with children since they were in a vulnerable position. But in the 21st century were the support and protection that men once provided aren’t as much needed as they once were. As certain old traditions just go out of whack. The idea that men are supposed to be providers made sense when muscles were what was needed to bring protein to the table or fight off other men, but these are not as relevant, at least not in the developed world. So why should we still hold on to these ideas? That I, as a man, should be financially supporting my partner when they are as capable or are already financially better off than I am doesn’t seem to make as much sense to men anymore.

This may explain why marriage has been in decline, and why people would even consider getting married. The historical foundation of marriage, i.e, to pass down lineage, doesn’t fit well in our modern world, where patriarchy doesn’t exist as it once did, at least in the developed world. I believe, particularly for men, we need to revisit what is truly expected of us in the modern world, or just be left with our current crisis of masculine identity, especially among young men

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My Drinking problem and it effects

For many years now, I have been a hardcore drinker. I started drinking pretty heavily in my early twenties(currently I’m 36). At first, I started drinking as a new experience. I felt as though I had led a fairly uneventful adolescence, so I tried to make up for it when I got to college. One way to achieve this goal was by going to parties and engaging in whatever mind-bending substance was offered to me(and there were a few), but what stuck with me the most was alcohol. I felt really free when I got drunk; no matter how embarrassing the situation was, I didn’t care when I was drunk. I spoke my mind regardless of how it might make other people feel. I am a firm believer that if you want to really get to know a person, do some type of drug with them. It doesn’t necessarily have to be alcohol( weed can also get someone’s true character out). In fact, I once read that in South Korea, whenever a business deal is about to be made, it’s usually over drinks to really get a chance to know the person you’re going to work with. I honestly had some of the most intimate conversations with people I had just met, because we’re both under the influence.

At first, I was only drinking socially and having a great time doing it. But eventually I began to drink alone. You see, I’ve always suffered from occasional depression(or at least since I was in high school), but I found other avenues to deal with it, especially sports. But after my foray into drinking, I began substituting that as a way of coping.

Drinking heavily as I do has cost me many things over the years: Jobs, my health, my finances, and relationships. Every time it has, I’ve set a purpose to be quiet. I’ve tried using dating sites as motivation to get out and meet people as a distraction, but funny enough, I would start drinking again and find a way to mess up any potential relationship. I started doing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, it worked well in the beginning, but soon I found myself relapsing and not even going anymore. I would have people in my life try to intervene, family, friends, and even coworkers. I would listen and appreciate it and genuinely attempt to stop, not for my sake, but for the people around me. I’ve done counseling, and it helps a bit; mostly, it was just having someone keep me accountable. Almost like a life coach telling me what I should be doing and making sure I’m not drinking.

My problem is that every time I try to be quiet, I do well in the beginning. I’ll go a month without drinking, and then that day will come when I’m just bored at home and I decide to make that ten-minute walk to the liquor store, and get me a bottle of whiskey and start all over again.

Recently, I got arrested after attacking various family members in my household. I was held for three days, released, but not allowed to go to my childhood home. I was essentially homeless. The thing that was a saving grace was that I had my wallet with my ID and credit cards, so I was able to stay at a hotel for a few nights. But being at a hotel was unsustainable, especially since I didn’t have a job. I didn’t have my cellphone, so I couldn’t get in contact with anyone. I was for the first time truly by myself. I thought of this, maybe as an opportunity to become truly self-reliant. I had an order of protection issued by the D.A. against my whole family, so I couldn’t go home to even get my stuff. I had to get a new cell just to be able to contact some friends to see if I can crash on their couch. After visiting a men’s shelter and looking inside. I told I would rather max all my credit cards staying at a hotel than being there.

Luckily, I got in contact with an old friend who’s letting me sleep in their cellar. I was able to speak with my family, who said they forgave me and that I should come home after the order of protection was up. I’m currently boxing, reading, eating better, and staying fit. My only goal as of right now is going back home, getting a job, and doing my best to stay sober.

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Transform Your Life with BJJ: Combatting Depression Through Community

I took BJJ about four years ago for the first time in an academy in the Forest Hills neighborhood of Queens, off a recommendation from a friend. I enjoyed it quite a lot and did it for a few months until my job piled me up with a bunch of overtime. I didn’t complain much at the time because I was making a whole lot of money. Recently, I took up the sport again, this time at a new Academy. I decided to pick it up again after reading a book titled “Lost Connection” by Johann Hari. One of the book’s highlights was how many people go through depression because they don’t feel any real sense of community. And from listening to a few self-help podcasts I learned that taking up martial arts is not only a great(and fun) way of staying in shape, but that you can also find a sense of community. So I began my search for an academy that was a reasonable distance from my house as well as had a schedule that accommodated mine (I tend to work in the evenings, so I needed something with morning classes). And I found a place that worked in the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens. After taking a trial class, I found the instructor referred to as the professor to be friendly( in my earlier experiences in martial arts classes, that hasn’t always been the case). After the class, I decided to sign up.

At first, I was going fairly regularly about three times a week but then I fell into a bit of a rote(or depression) and stopped attending classes and just took up drinking in the morning. I’m a borderline alcoholic, and one of my motivations for taking up martial arts was to have something else to do in the morning besides drinking. As I stopped frequenting the classes the Professor(as everyone calls the instructor) would begin sending me text messages and calling asking me if everything was ok, I found this very thoughtful (especially since I already signed a one-year commitment) most places would just bill you monthly without thinking too much about whether you came or not. So told him I felt a bit depressed and that was the reason I wasn’t attending.

I went back to my morning routine of drinking just before I go to work. I’m not going to sit here and codon drinking before my shift starts but it was something I did for a long time. But one day it was different as I came into work somebody from the main office decided to come on shift and have a conversation with me (for the sake of discrepancy I’m not going to reveal what line of work I was in) after a brief conversation with the said person I was called downstairs to speak with my supervisor. I would find out from my Supervisor that the person who had a conversation with me reported to the higher-ups that I was intoxicated and I had to go home. I learned the following day I was suspended until further notice.

I wasn’t at all to bothered by this, I figured I would just go and collect unemployment(like the previous times I’ve been suspended) and I would use this free time to work on myself and do things I wanted to do but never had the free time for. This didn’t exactly go as planned at first, instead of doing anything productive I went into the bad habit of just drinking all day. All this while the professor would call me from time to time to check on me(since I wasn’t attending class anymore).

Finally one day after laying in my bed all day just watching movies, I decided that I was dipping into a very unhealthy situation and decided that I had to leave my room. So I took a shower, got dressed, and went to a BJJ class. At first, that class was especially hard since I took a bit of a hiatus and all I was doing was drinking all day but bared through it. After going consistently for the next couple of days my whole outlook began to change, I felt less angry and depressed, two moods that led me to drink. I stopped drinking altogether. Practicing Bjj has made me feel less like a loser, that even though I’m not working, I’m still accomplishing something. This new resurgence in myself from BJJ spilled over to other parts of life, as mentioned I stopped drinking I even got motivated to look for another job, in fact, I had two job offers that paid better than my previous gig.

I’m still new at the sport, but for anyone who feels a bit down his luck, why not give BJJ a try, it might change you or at least you’ll learn how to kick ass!

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The Evolutionary Purpose of Human Sexuality

Why do we have sex? Why do human beings put so much effort into having it? The basic answer would be because it feels pleasurable. Yes, that is true, sex can be quite a pleasurable sensation, but there are many pleasurable things like eating a piece of chocolate or getting a nice soothing massage, yet we don’t put anywhere near the amount of time and effort into doing these things as we do towards having sex. Another answer is for the purpose of reproduction, but with the plethora of birth control oppositions (birth control pills, condoms, etc) is that really a viable reason why most people have for having sex, particularly in the Western world?

What is the purpose of sex? easy enough to answer. It is the mechanism that organisms use to propagate their genes into the next generation(well, at least half), and why do organisms(multicellular organisms such as mammals, fish, and birds) use this method? Well, some have theorized that it helps bolster their progenies’ immune system by having shared its genetic information from two genetically distinct parents. Current theories place the emergence of sex around five hundred million years ago.

All life’s purpose on this planet is to reproduce( as nihilistic as that sounds), and it is no different for humans. Our urge to have sex is a by-product of millions of years of evolutionary history. Our ability to discriminate between sexual partners under the guise of physical attraction is also a by-product of our evolutionary history. Physically attractive people are supposed to have a good immune system so the theory goes.

And what about the differences between the sexes when it comes to their attitudes about. Anyone who has dealings with both men and women would discover their attitudes towards sex are decisively different. Men are more prone to sexual escapades and seem to be less discriminatory when it comes to who they have sex with. Women are generally more coy. This makes sense when you realize the two sexes don’t share the same burden when it comes to sex, i.e, women get pregnant and will take the brunt of the child rearing, so it makes sense for them to be the more prejudiced who they copulate with. Men, on the other hand, are programmed to have sex with as many partners as possible(if they actually choose to do this, it is their own choice, of course). Need proof on how promiscuous men can be, gay men are a perfect example, their ability to have sometimes hundreds of sexual partners is because of course, because they are not inhibited by women’s natural coyness.

So, back to my original argument on why to have sex. To be more emotionally attached to somebody, a reasonable argument, your brain releases certain chemicals that almost make you more attached to the person you are having sex with(evidence suggests this is more true for women than it is for men), but a lot of people hook up all the time, sometimes even having one-night stands. Can you really be emotionally attached to a person you are minimally familiar with, and what about the countless women who give up their bodies to alpha males(i.e, athletes, rappers, politicians, and other men of stature), can you really say these women love these men, perhaps on a very superficial level?

Humans’ potency to have sex is nothing more than just evolutionary mechanisms put in place to make sure we are acting on evolutionary obligations to propagate genes into the next generation.

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Understanding Homelessness in NYC: Myths and Realities

Living in New York City, as is the case in any major city throughout the world, one of the many daily occurrences you encounter is that of homelessness. As I walk into the subway and sit down, I expect some person claiming to be homeless and needing some help. I actually see the same person sometimes multiple times a week asking for money. I used to be pretty generous and give money to the homeless(especially if they had a visible handicap), but then one day I asked myself a question about why there were so many people who were homeless and what policy could be put into place to really address the problem.

First and foremost, homelessness, particularly in NYC, gets over-exaggerated. About less the one percent of New Yorkers are homeless. And to further break the number down, most homeless people suffer from either substance abuse or mental illness, which inhibits them from carrying out basic life necessities such as holding a steady job or maintaining basic hygiene. If you want to alleviate homelessness, more mental health hospitals and fewer shelters would prove much more effective. Now can we go around and put every homeless person who we suspect to be crazy and rush them to a mental institution no( at least not exactly) It would best be done through a system where a homeless person breaks a law such as public urination or vagrancy and having a psychiatrist do an evaluation to see if that person is susceptible to go into society and of course getting the person to consent to be institutionalized (unless the person is deemed a danger to himself or others and such consent wouldn’t be needed).

And second, the idea that I am going to give every homeless person who asks me for money throughout my day my hard-earned cash to encourage them further to beg doesn’t help anybody. It came to me one day that many homeless people actually are already receiving government assistance through disability and SSI checks that they beg because they know they can get over on people. A typical New York City subway train contains ten cars. So if you were homeless and ambitious enough to beg for money on every subway car and get at least two people to give you a dollar, you can earn twenty dollars per train. You hit five trains in a day, you can make up to a hundred dollars a day just begging for money(untaxed, mind you). So homelessness for some can be pretty lucrative.

If you don’t buy my point, look at how the Japanese deal with their homeless issues. Which can best be explained by watching this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eK–oCVP18A. I myself had gotten a chance to visit Tokyo a few years back and was struck by how different homelessness was over there than it is here. First, no homeless person can ever be seen begging. Second, I didn’t encounter any homeless person who reeked of foul odor, as is the case in NYC(whole subway carts will be emptied just because passengers can’t take the smell of some of the homeless people in it). The third most homeless people live in these makeshift communities in the Tokyo subway systems.

I do believe that we should help people who are down on their luck for their sake and ours, but I just think we’re going the wrong way about it. And that by having an honest and more open dialogue, we’ll really help these downtrodden individuals.

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Embracing Aging: A Journey Through Life’s Disappointments

Getting older can be seen as a dreadful experience. When we are young, we feel as if things will get better as time passes, but then comes the truth for most of us around our mid-twenties that this is not the case. Things only get worse, your body slowly deteriorates, and you notice you are not quite as energetic as you once were. I can remember getting up in the morning and going to the park, and playing basketball for the entire day. Now, such a thought I find to be dreadful. I’m about to turn 28. Now, to most that would seem to be a still relatively young age, but to me, it’s the beginning of the spiral. The source of the optimism that I once had has begun to fade. When I was younger, I felt as if I had a plethora of opportunities in front of me to pursue, but not anymore. Can I become a doctor, probably, if I wanted to start working at 40? Can I become a professional athlete now that the ship has sailed after high school? Am I going to still be able to talk to young girls(young as in between 18 & 24) and they still find me attractive, or am I going to be that old guy pushing too hard?

Now comes the question of whether or not I accomplish anything worthwhile. Or have I just wasted my youth? Can I look back as I get older and say I lived a fulfilling life? I guess the answer to that question is both comparative and subjective. On one hand, am I comparing my life to other people around or people I see in the media? Secondly, am I comparing my life to an unrealistic, idealistic way in which my life should have turned out? The true answer is I don’t fully know, but I do feel at times I missed out on opportunities when I was young that I’ll never be able to get a chance at as I get older. I suppose the best thing for me to do is accept the fact that I am getting older, that one day I will die, this is just the process of life, how life has carried on on this earth since microbes first populated the earth.

Life is just a process that goes on. People overcome their childhood to reach adulthood, get married, have kids, and then they die, leaving their children to continue on to the same processes. Many people cope with this by using religion as a comfort, which is OK, I guess, but what about us who don’t have a god? Is there some alternative for us, some sort of spirituality that can help us as a leading light in this darkness we call life? Maybe we should just accept a materialistic world that has no real purpose.

To be human is something, I guess you just have to overcome, as spoken by Zarathustra. We all cling on to things to help us forget about life, whether it’s movies, watching our favorite television show, following our favorite sport team, reading a thrilling novel, are engaging in an addictive video game, these are all just distraction to the inevitable that someday we are all going to die, and the earth will continue to orbit the sun. just as some person who lived in China during the 12th century in a small village, had a family, was happy, suffered, and died. Yet I know nothing of this person, but I’m sure he existed just as trillions of other organisms existed on this planet.

But I guess this all doesn’t have to be negative. I recently came across the philosophy of optimistic nihilism, that the mere knowledge of the pointlessness of life can be our refuge. Why does it matter that your boss berated you for doing a bad job? What does matter is that you lost that pick-up game of basketball. What does matter is that you and your spouse of ten years are getting a divorce. Because to the eyes of the universe, none of it matters.

But I suppose these are just fleeting thoughts that some will embrace, some will reject, and some will be indifferent to.

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A Disappointing Paris Experience: Insights from My Trip

From May 23, 2017, until June 4, 2017, I was in Paris, France. It was my second time ever outside the United States( The only other country I’ve been to was Japan) and my first time in France. I didn’t really have any expectations before I came to France. I decided to come to Paris on vacation. The reason I chose Paris is that for the past year I’ve been teaching myself French. So I thought to myself, France would probably be the best place to get some practice in. So here goes my review of the entire trip(from of course, my own personal opinion)

Paris, I found to be pretty boring and really expensive, the sum of my experience there. The entire city looks virtually the same with its cliche three to four-story buildings. I found myself sometimes in new parts of the city, wondering to myself, “If I’ve been here before”. You can walk the city for hours yet see the same old canals and cobbled streets. Now I’m from New York City, and I’m used to experiencing totally different scenery after a couple of hours of walking. In New York, neighborhoods can look totally different from each other and have a totally different vibe altogether. This is not true of Paris, where the entire city can be pretty uniform in both scenery and vibe.

Now, the second strife I had with Paris is how extremely expensive it was(particularly the food). In Paris, there are a lot of bistros, and one can commonly observe Parisians eating outside many of these bistros. I myself ate at some of these places, and yes, the food is good, but I soon found out bistros were the only places one could find good quality food (of course, the exception is if you cook your own dinner). In New York, if I were hungry and wanted to eat out on a budget, I would have a plethora of options. Maybe I can go to the local deli and order a hero for four dollars, or maybe go to a Chinese takeout and order a meal for less than six dollars. This is not true of Paris, where you will be hard-pressed to find any fast food joints. I’ve seen about two McDonald’s (which were not as good as the McDonald’s in America in my opinion). There are no food trucks in Paris. The only option I found myself taking if I wanted to eat for cheap was to visit a supermarket and buy a refrigerated sandwich(which let me tell you aren’t really that good and doesn’t certainly don’t fill you up).

There are a ton of scamming gypsies all over Paris; they congregate by the tourist attraction, usually asking tourists if they would like to sign some form and then asking them for some Euros. Here’s one example, my second day, I went to visit The world famous Musee d’Orsay(It contain the famous Van Gogh self-portrait) I was across the street from the museum when a woman who I thought was deaf(as she played the role) came up to me with some forms with a pledge to donate to some bogus institution for the deaf. I smiled and signed to her that I wasn’t interested in making any pledges. As I crossed the street, I saw here going up to two females and immediately conversing with them. I must tell you I was a little upset at this revelation of deceit. She had me perfectly fooled that she was deaf and had me feeling a slight remorse for her. I witnessed more gypsy scamming besides this, such as an old gypsy woman asking children at a McDonald’s for food; the children proceeded to give her food, she smiled and took the food. I walked outside ten minutes later to find this woman with a bag full of bread( I guess that wasn’t enough to satiate her treacherous hunger). I also notice that virtually all the homeless in Paris are, in fact gypsies, and they can be seen sitting on cardboard(sometimes entire families, including children) and begging for money.

Overall, I believe Paris is overtly hyped up as a great and magnificent city. But hey, I guess it all depends on what you’re looking for. I am more of a big city cosmopolitan kind of guy. I like to walk around a large city and be in awe, like I am in New York, and I was in Tokyo.

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Debating the Role of Prisons in Modern Society

Recently, I had a few debates with several people about the relevance of prisons. Whether or not prisons where an appropriate form of punishment in our modern times. The opposing view was that prisons did more harm than good, by further indoctrinating people into crime, or that prisons permanently hinder people from ever fully entering mainstream society after they are released. Of course, many people who hold an anti-prison viewpoint don’t give an alternative to prisons, or when they do, it’s a vague answer, such as rehabilitation, without giving details on how this rehabilitation would be administered.

I am not at all condoning our justice system. There are certainly many ways in which it can be approved. It is particularly audacious that the United States has less than five percent of the global population but holds about twenty-five percent of its prison population. So I say the problem isn’t necessarily prisons, but the fact that we have too many people in prisons and that one particular ethnic group is overly represented among that prison population. 

I wholeheartedly believe that many offenses that warrant prison sentences today are unjust. Such as drug offenses, which on the surface is a victimless crime since it involves two consenting parties, the drug dealer and the purchaser of the drug. I also believe crimes like tax evasion and failure to pay child support shouldn’t warrant prison time since it does more bad than good by having society pay for the maintenance of offenders who essentially didn’t pay society in the first place, an unusual sense of justice if one truly thinks about it.

To run any modern society, you need to establish a government with an effective rule of law. The government must have some coercive power to make sure all its populace abides its laws. How do you deter people from engaging in crime? By establishing punitive retribution for anyone who breaks the law. The most popular form of such a retribution in all nations is a prison system. In prehistoric human societies, humans probably carried out punishment on an offender in three ways. The first was in a form of payment to the offending party through cattle, tools, or involuntary servitude; the second would be in exclusion from the clan, or in other words, being permanently banned from the group; the third would have been death.

All three are used today in a modified form, the first through fines that one would pay( usually as tickets for a minor offense); The second would be imprisonment, which is essentially separating someone from everyone else, and the third (although not very common among industrialized nations) is the death penalty.

Many would argue that prison acts as a conditioning for criminals, but has that to do with the prison are the innate conditions of the prisoner himself. Among people, there are just bad apples; some people are naturally more aggressive, more impulsive, and less able to use foresight in their decisions as compared to others. Coupled with an unsavory environment leaves some prone to criminality, and of course, leaves the rest of us with the difficult decision of the best way to deal with said crime.

Of course, I am not arguing against any imposition of reform. I feel as if reform is important, particularly in the case of minor offenders. But this should be available as an opposition for prisoners and not so much a requirement. First and foremost, prisons are meant as punishment and should be seen as such; consequences are the best deterrent to ill behavior. Still, access to some reformatory programs would be good for both the inmate and society. Programs such as skill training or educational opportunities would help inmates reintegrate into mainstream society after being released from prison.

In point, to truly argue against prisons, you have to come up with a system that both keeps society safe and can address how to reduce crime.

 

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