Guys, listen up. There’s a big problem that is not really being talked about. Humanity (and masculinity) is under attack from every side. Is it aliens? Nope, it’s our fellows on this planet.
There are no true role models for men anymore. The only models that are held up for us show us as swaggering, beer-belching idiots. This is not how it has always been.
Once upon a time, there was the figure of the knight. A man who lived by a code and who existed to serve others, not himself. If a knight was good enough, he could even become a king. Who among you reading this has thought of becoming a king?
Probably very few. Or those who have think a king is someone who wears flashy clothes, lots of “bling”, and goes out clubbing. This is wrong. Try again.
So, what makes a man a man? Well, let’s start with the basics. First of all, a man must be human. I can hear you now: “Easy! I woke up human today.” Did you, though? Here’s a major part of what it means to be human. Ready?
Human Beings are Naturally Free
Again, I can hear what you’re thinking: “I’m free! I’m not in jail, I have a good job, a spouse, all the trimmings! The country I live in even guarantees my freedoms.” Really? Let’s look at all the ways you are enslaved every day and probably never realized it.
The Problem
Physical Slavery
Just because you didn’t wake up today in chains, does not mean you are physically free. Let’s dig in here a little to see how we are physically enslaved.
Big Pharma
Big Pharma exists for one reason: to make money selling you medications you think you need. The truth is that most people do not need nearly as many medications as they have been prescribed. In fact Big Pharma routinely engages in disease mongering, which is a term used to describe the widening (or creation) of the diagnostic boundaries of illnesses and aggressively promoting medications to treat these “diseases”. Translation: Big Pharma is creating illnesses so that they can sell you a medication to treat it. 1, 2
Suffering from Low T(estosterone)? Probably not. That’s another one of the “diseases” that Big Pharma has made up. 3,4. In fact, supplementing with testosterone can cause your testicles to shrink. If your total testosterone is maintained at high levels, say 800 and above, your testicles may never recover from that. Don’t take my word for it, though. Ask your doctor.
Men are often asked to take testosterone if they suffer from erectile dysfunction (ED) or low libido. However, there is no evidence that testosterone therapy helps either of those problems. 5 Despite a lack of evidence for its efficacy, though, testosterone therapy is a $1B market.
Speaking of ED, there’s a little blue pill that men can take for that, right? Right. If you have ED, though, guess what else you probably have? Atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries). Typically, ED is the “canary in the coal mine” for doctors and lets them know that you probably have systemic hardening of the arteries. The little blue pill does nothing for the underlying problem; it merely treats the symptom. For more information on this topic, read How Not To Die by Michael Greger M.D. FACLM.
Okay, you say. I get it. Drugs are bad. Is that all you’ve got? Nope.
Constant Tracking
Now let’s consider that smartphone that you carry everywhere with you. It keeps you connected to the world, right? Right. Here’s what else it does: the little GPS chip built into your phone also lets your cell phone company (and anyone who can compel your cell phone company, such as, say, your government) track your whereabouts 24/7/365. The battery that is soldered onto your phone’s motherboard keeps that chip powered up, even when the phone appears to be off (dirty little tech secret: there’s always a little trickle of power being supplied to your phone even when it is “off”; that’s why your battery can still drain even when your screen is dark). Remember when you could remove the battery from your phone and it had no power? It’s been a while, right? Now you know why.
So, you have a tether that you willingly carry around. Kind of like the leash you put on your dog.
Food (?)
How about food, then? Food is a deep can of worms. I’m only going to touch on a few things about this topic. Do you like fish? If you do, you may not in a few minutes.
Because of heavy industry, many heavy metals have been spewed into our atmosphere or absorbed into the soil in which we grow food. As a result, pretty much every being on the planet has absorbed these metals into their systems either directly or indirectly. I’m sure you’ve heard that sea fish have lots of mercury in them, but did you know that lake fish also have some? That’s because the metals that are dispersed by the wind also get into the water and affect the fish. You then eat the fish and get their load of heavy metals when you do (Mmm…mercury…tasty!)6
Beyond mercury, though, humans have managed to just about destroy wild fish though our practices of raising fish in hatcheries and then releasing them into the wild where they compete with (and often displace) wild fish. These fish that come from hatcheries have less robust genetics and are often prone to diseases. You then eat these diseased fish. Not exactly a basis for robust health, is it? Learn more about this by watching the film Artifishal.
The food we eat then becomes part of us. It may even affect us in ways we don’t expect. The nascent field of epigenetics tells us that our genes are not static as we once thought, but can be turned on and off through environmental factors. 7
What about that beer I mentioned as a symbol of masculinity earlier? Surely it’s okay, right? Wrong. When we think of beer, we think of alcohol. We don’t also think about what else may be in there.
Interestingly, when doctors looked at men with alcoholic liver cirrhosis, they noticed that the men often looked like women: they had breasts and their body fat had been redistributed in a way more consistent with female fat distribution.
These are signs of having been exposed to a high level of estrogen. So, acting on a hypothesis, the doctors took some alcoholic beverages and removed the alcohol, volatile substances and most of the water.
What they were left with were phytoestrogens (plant-based estrogen). They also found that these estrogen molecules were producing changes in humans. 8
That beer’s not looking so manly now, is it?
Vaccines
Let’s talk briefly about vaccines. Scientists used to think that once a vaccine was created, that genetic recombination did not occur [translation: scientists used to think that vaccines would not change once created]. It turns out that they can change, though. In fact, a vaccine used to treat a disease can sometimes cause that disease to manifest. It depends on what other diseases may be present in the person or animal receiving the vaccine. 9 Other problems may also arise with vaccines that appear safe. 10
Let’s review where we are: vaccines that we think will help us might hurt us, the beer we drink is turning us more feminine, the food we eat is unhealthy and possibly changing our genes in unpredictable ways, the drug companies and doctors are giving us drugs to treat diseases they made up (and other drugs to treat the side effect of those drugs), and we’re carrying a device around that knows where we are every second of every day. Doesn’t sound much like freedom, does it?
Mental Slavery
Now that we’ve had a chance to see how our bodies are being controlled every day, let’s look at some common ways we are enslaved mentally.
School
The modern school system had its origins in 18th century Prussia. These primitive (but tax-funded and compulsory) schools for girls and boys provided an eight-year system of education. This system provided the basic skills of reading and writing as well as training in music and religion. Parents who wanted their children to learn basic mathematics and calculus had to pay an extra fee. The goal of such schooling was to provide the basic technical skills children would need to get a job11.
In the 19th century Horace Mann, a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, visited Europe in order to learn about the school system employed there. Mann wanted to see different kinds of schooling in an attempt to save the faltering Calvinist system of education in Massachusetts. He came away very impressed by the Prussian system.
Taking inspiration from the Prussian system, Mann helped to create what he called “common schools” in Masschusetts. The schools were called “common” because they were available to all white children across the social spectrum. These one-room schools did not charge tuition, nor did they separate children into grade levels. Each child learned reading, writing and arithmetic as well as moral and social values; they took oral exams at the end of the school year to demonstrate their learning.
Mann’s ideas caught on and spread to other states. Eventually, the “common schools” became our present-day public schools12, 13, 14.
What’s the point of this little history? It’s to illustrate that schools started with one purpose: to create citizens who could contribute to their country’s economy through their work. They were given the basic skills to do that work, as well as indoctrinated in the subjects (religion, morality, social mores) that they needed to know. In short, they were given enough education to be useful to society.
The model has not changed much over time. Schools today still teach with one goal in mind: to give the students enough information to go forth and be good workers. True, at higher levels of schooling students get to choose the subjects they want to study but the goal remains to give those students the information they need to get jobs and contribute to the economy.
While it’s true that people need to earn money in order for the economy of a country to function, there are other ways to cause that to happen. Here’s one: what if schools gave people the skills to live good lives and explore and find what they loved so that they could create businesses doing what they loved? That would keep the economy going through entrepreneurship and provide for the well-being of the people of the country.
The fact that the educational system has not transitioned to a more productive model leaves one conclusion: those in charge think the system works just fine. As we’ll see later, though, modern office jobs are not great for those who work them. In fact, they’re downright unhealthy.
So if the powers-that-be think that everything is hunky-dory when it’s really not, that leads to the conclusion that the system does not value the individual but merely his contribution to the system. And that, my friends, is slavery.
Political Correctness
Ever said something that you thought was innocuous and had someone tell you that you had offended them? Maybe it was something you wouldn’t even think of as offensive, such as unintentionally mispronouncing their name. Maybe it was using a certain word that had no bad connotations in your mind (handicapped, for instance).
The above are examples of a PC (politically correct, not personal computer) culture that has spread throughout the world, and it is a form of mental slavery.
Anyone alive is constantly being sent messages about what is “correct” to say and do. I put the word correct in quotations to show that we’re not talking about using proper grammar or choosing the right fork at dinner, but a type of “correctness” that aims to police your every word and action with the goal of making you feel guilty. The true aim, though, is simple: to control the way you think.
Does that sound like freedom? Not to me. It’s one step removed from the world of Minority Report, where people were punished for actions they might take in the future.
News Reporting
There’s another big area where you are being controlled: the daily news. In the United States (and other countries modeled on the type of government found in the United States), we are supposed to have a free press. This is so all sides of an issue can be presented to us so that we may form an informed opinion about what is going on in the world around us. This freedom of the press is guaranteed in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution (the First Amendment also guarantees freedom of religion, the freedom of speech, the right of assembly and the right to petition the government for redress of grievances).
A free press doesn’t mean a press free from bias, though. There’s always been bias in the news; people have always recognized that a given newspaper, magazine, radio or TV channel leans a certain way. That’s no surprise: as human beings we form opinions on the world around us. Those opinions, based on our experiences, then tend to produce a certain bias through which we view the world. The formation of this type bias is largely unconscious in individuals, and largely purposeful in institutions.
There’s another way to present information that goes beyond bias. That way is to present information through the lens of propaganda. Propaganda presents information in a way that appeals to the emotions while distorting the underlying facts.
The tools of propaganda are these:
- Buzzwords: using words that trigger an emotional reaction in the viewer or listener
- Name calling/demonizing: making those who do not agree with you seem “less than” by applying a label to them to take advantage of that label’s emotional meaning. Example: the word “Nazi” applied to something other than an actual Nazi (a member of the National Socialist party in Germany in the 1930s).
- Euphemisms: making harsh or bad things sound better. Example: saying “passed away” instead of saying “died” or saying “correctional facility” instead of “prison”.
These tools are then deployed in various ways: creating “bandwagons” (encouraging people to do something because others already have done them) to jump onto, testimonials (cites a source to give credibility to something), transference (transferring the authority of a person, product or organization onto something else), faulty logic (arguing based on false premises), fear-mongering (appealing to fear that something bad will happen if action is not taken), stereotyping (lumping all people into a certain group without regard for individuals), glittering generalities (creating the illusion that one option is better than another on no particular grounds), repetition (persuading someone to buy something by repeating a message over and over), circular arguments (states the conclusion as part of the proof of a premise), and skewing numbers, facts or statistics (presents numbers in a skewed manner to affect what we think on a particular issue).
Does any of the above seem familiar? Perhaps you’ve heard or seen some of this before? Perhaps even on your nightly news? If you need to view some footage, look up Donald Trump’s speeches at his rallies during the 2016 campaign. Or watch Fox News.
It’s worth noting that propaganda is a form of dishonesty. Unlike persuasion, the goal of propaganda is to force your mind to think in certain ways by triggering your emotions. Unlike bias, propaganda is intentionally distorting underlying facts in order to manipulate your thinking by manipulating your emotions.
If you look more closely at the tools and forms of propaganda, you’ll also recognize another area where you encounter it: advertising. Advertisers study human psychology and behavior and tailor their ads to target various responses in you 15, 16. They know exactly what to do to get you to buy their product.
Why do they use your own psychology against you? Because most things that are advertised you don’t really need (food, water and shelter are your basic needs). Yet, the company wants you to buy what they are selling, so they get “under” you by exploiting your inherent human weaknesses.
Emotional Slavery
Modern men don’t relate to others well. The idea that all men are sold in childhood is this: boys don’t cry (The Cure even wrote a song about it.) Boys are also told that they shouldn’t show any emotion for fear of looking weak (especially to girls). Society also encourages men to be always in control.
Well, that’s all bullshit. All the above does is create men who are used to stuffing their emotions instead of dealing with them in a healthy way. Feelings can only be stuffed so long. Then they come out. And unless the person whose feelings are rising knows how to deal with it in a healthy way, it’s likely to come out in a way that creates relationship problems 17. It’s valuable to know how to deal with your emotions. So valuable, in fact, that you would expect it to be taught in school. But it’s not.
To be fair, men don’t have any role models in this area. Instead, we have two extremes: the “manly” man who swaggers and the wimp who is always overwhelmed by his feelings. Neither example is useful for men, or indeed for humans.
It’s not a wonder that there are so many emotional problems. As a society, we are encouraged to remain alone and isolated from other influences that might be helpful to us. How? Through so-called social media.
Social media gives the illusion of being connected to others while remaining in whatever comfortable rut we have managed to carve out for ourselves. Instead of interacting with real people, we feign true interaction by hitting the “Like” button or posting a comment on someone’s post while remaining safe behind our phone screens. We use social media to obtain the social validation that our lives are worthwhile18. When we stop doing that, our lives improve19
Engaging with social media takes time away from things we could be doing to improve our lives. Indeed, a whole host of emotional problems are related to social media use20. It’s even been found to be addictive. Remember: the life you see on social media is not real life; it’s a highly edited, filtered version of what someone wants you to see.
If you’re in doubt about the addictive potential of social media or the effects it has on your psyche, it’s worth watching The Social Dilemma. That documentary shows very clearly how you are being manipulated by social media to continue to use it instead of making real connections. It’s sickening.
Sexual Slavery
Fifty Shades of Grey? Nope. Several shades of sickening. Here we go.
Pornography
There’s another force manipulating men and the way they think and behave. That force is pornography. It’s not surprising: One of the most fundamental drives we as humans have is our sexual drive. As people retreat more and more from in-person interactions, they are seeking alternative pathways to satisfy their basic urges. Pornography is one outlet for those urges.
It’s also a sickening and perverse outlet, and becoming more so every day as new information emerges about the effect of pornography on women and children. Porn is also a vehicle for actual sexual trafficking of human beings21.
As bad as porn is for women and children, it’s also not good for men. The Butner Study found that 85% of all men who looked at images of child pornography went on to commit sexual offenses against children22.
Pornography also negatively affects pair-bonding in humans (you know, the drive to form a close relationship with another person)23. So men who indulge in porn are less likely to be able to effectively bond to a romantic partner.
Pornography is often about control and being dominant over another person; as such it presents a skewed image of how to relate to our sexual partners. It encourages men to view women as objects instead of individuals, as an incubator for a vagina instead of someone to relate to.
Taking this attitude out into actual relationships is a recipe for disaster. It highlights, however, one aspect that many viewers of porn have: they are emotionally immature24.
This emotional immaturity is a highlight of all addictions. And in case you’re wondering, porn is an addiction. Why? Because it stimulates the same reward system in the brain25 that alcohol, cocaine and opioids do. It’s not just a bad habit. Repeated viewing of porn actually rewires the brain26. Are you concerned yet? If not, reread the previous few paragraphs.
Given all of the bad effects of porn, why does it exist in today’s world? Because as of 2015 it was an estimated $97 billion dollar industry27. That’s more than the combined revenues of Microsoft, Google, Amazon, eBay, Apple, Yahoo and Netflix at the same time.
Gender Fluidity
Beyond porn, though, there’s another form of sexual and mental slavery at work in today’s society. What is it? Quite simply, it’s the idea that gender is fluid and can be chosen. Much like you’d choose to have a pizza instead of a hamburger, the thinking goes, you can choose whether you want to be male or female.
Umm…no. The combination of genes that your parents gave you determined your genotype before you were born; part of this genotype was whether you were male or female. That genotype was then expressed as a phenotype (your appearance, including the development of secondary sexual characteristics at the appropriate time).
No matter how much you change someone’s outer appearance, they will still be either biologically male or female. A person’s biological genotype will have all sorts of implications for them throughout their lives. If a person is born male, they will have all sorts of biological differences, including a difference in strength and in the ways that they think28. Can they choose to change those things? No, they can’t. No amount of wishing will make it so.
What they can do is simple: (a) they can receive psychological counseling to help them make sense of their gender identity or (b) they can (if they have the money) have a surgeon hack off parts of their bodies and have a doctor put them on hormones to help “transition” them to another sex. Does this “transitioning” actually make them into the other sex? Nope. It just affects their phenotype. Their genotype is still either male or female. Their sexual orientation also appears to have a biological basis29.
So, why would someone choose to “transition”? There’s a very small sampling of evidence that indicates that gender identity might be as biologically based as sexual identity. If for some reason there’s a mismatch between the biological gender and the phenotypical gender, that might be a reason for someone to transition.
Without a clear biological reason, though, we are left with differences in psyche. There are two primary types of differences: gender nonconformity (rebelling against the societal norms for your assigned gender) and gender dysphoria (a psychological conflict between one’s physical gender and the gender with which they identify)30.
So the question then becomes: what caused these changes in a person’s psyche to cause them to be gender dysphoric? There is no clear-cut cause for gender dysphoria, but hormonal malfunctions when a fetus is developing have been proposed as a potential cause31. If this hormonal malfunction theory is correct, then the environment may be a factor in gender dysphoria.
What in the environment causes hormones to malfunction? There are a whole class of compounds present in our environment known as endocrine disruptors. One such class of disruptor is the dioxin family, which is formed in industrial processes when chlorine and bromine are burned in the presence of carbon and oxygen. What are some of these industrial processes? Burning trash, chlorine bleaching of paper, production of pesticides and dismantling and recycling electronic waste. You know, things that happen every day.
Dioxins are known to disrupt both male and female hormone signaling (biosynthesis of hormones). Early exposure to dioxins in the womb can even permanently affect male sperm quality and production32. It seems likely that dioxins could affect other processes in male and female bodies as well.
Or take atrazine, an endocrine disruptor sprayed on corn crops as an herbicide. It has been known to turn male frogs into fully-functional female frogs33. Or phthalates: they have been known to induce “death signaling” in testicular cells, causing them to die earlier than they should34.
So, is it possible that gender dysphoria could be caused by these endocrine disruptors? Yes. Instead of curbing the problem of endocrine disruptors, though, we are being taught that transgenderism is natural and should be tolerated. That’s hardly a foregone conclusion.
Remember that one of the techniques of propaganda is repetition. If you repeat a lie often enough, people will come to believe it. Do you think if you are told transgenderism is natural and normal often enough, people will start to change their beliefs about natural human sexuality? I do. I see it happening right now.
And if you change the belief about what is natural in one of the most basic human drives, do you think you control what it means to be human?
Why would anyone care about redefining our views on human sexuality? Because it is sexual energy that creates everything in this world35. Think of a child: they can create extensive imaginary world but have trouble creating anything concrete. That’s because their sexual energy has yet to turn on.
We need to effectively channel our sexual energy, though. If we just let the sexual energy overwhelm us, we dissipate our creativity. Unlike what Napoleon Hill suggests, though, we do not need to transmute our sexual energy (transmutation: turning one thing into another). Instead, we need to learn how to direct our sexual energy to useful ends; this was the secret of ancient alchemy.
Religion and society exert control over us by telling us that our sexual energy is bad and needs to be repressed and denied. When we take their advice, we lose our creativity and shackle ourselves. We become willing slaves.
Jobs
I can hear you now: you’re saying “Hey, man, I don’t dissipiate my sexual energy. I’m a sexual god.” Ah, but you’re wrong. You dissipate your sexual energy everyday. It starts with your J-O-B.
For about 20% of males, working at an office job will cause a loss of libido by the time they turn 50. This loss of libido is caused by longer work hours and the constant pressure to get more done in less time.
Additionally, the stress faced at work makes it less likely that all men will be in the mood for sex after work36.
The stress faced at work also causes the hormones cortisol and epinephrine to be released. At high levels, these these hormones can lead to depressed sex drive. Chronic stress decreases interest in sex by causing high levels of these hormones to be released. This chronic stress then leads to unhealthy coping mechanisms such as smoking, drinking, and overeating. These unhealthy choices can lead to other poor lifestyle choices such as not exercising and lack of self-care; the cumulative effect of these poor choices is to create an unhealthy sex life37.
Even if you escape all of this, though, you may still experience problems if you have too many sexual partners. If you do, you may end up with something I bet you didn’t expect: not an STD (though you can contract those, too), but cancer38.
Still think that beer-swilling, womanizing stereotype for men is healthy?
Technological Slavery
We already covered a big component of technological slavery when talking about physical slavery: the fact that you are leashed to your phone 24/7/365.
You might say “Hey, if that’s the extent of my technological slavery, I’m good with it.” Care to take the red pill and go down the rabbit hole further? All right! Let’s go!
PRISM
The PRISM program is run by the National Security Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation in the United States. It’s purpose is to collect information directly from the servers of: Microsoft, Yahoo!, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube and Apple39.
So, if you’re using services provided by those companies (and I bet you are), any information you store on those servers can potentially be viewed by the U.S. government. That email you sent when you were drunk? Yep, the President could be reading it right now. That video you posted to YouTube? Yep, same thing. Everything you have stored in iCloud? Yikes!
So, even if you have done nothing wrong you are being spied on…and without any warrants being necessary to do so. It doesn’t get much more enslaved than that, does it?
Tailored Access Operations
As if the above wasn’t bad enough, if you end up on the NSA’s watch list, they will intercept any new laptop you buy and install malware on it40.
The moral here is simple: don’t end up on the NSA’s watch list if you want to maintain the illusion that you have any privacy.
Fluorescent Lighting
Want to hack your performance at work? Change your fluorescent lighting to some that has a higher frequency (32,000 Hz (Hertz), flickering 64,000 times per second to create a “continuous” light).
In a controlled experiment, people who were exposed to this kind of light made people feel more activated, had better problem-solving skills, and overall felt more pleasant than when they were exposed to low-frequency (50 Hz, flickering one hundred times per second) fluorescent lighting41.
Incredible that such a seemingly small change can make a measurable difference, isn’t it? How many other ways do you think you’re being helped or hindered by the environments you find yourself in?
These are just a few ways your life is being affected by forces outside of your control. I’m sure there are many more. And I’m also sure that other governments have other programs for their citizens, some of which make the programs in the United States look like complete freedom.
The Solution
Now that you’ve had a chance to look at some of the ways you’ve been enslaved, now it’s time to look at ways to counter these methods of enslavement.
Physical Slavery
Big Pharma
This one’s simple: do everything you can not to participate in this system. Find alternate ways to treat the conditions that you are currently treating with medications.
Let me be clear, here, though: if you are currently taking medications, do not suddenly stop taking them. Do some research about the conditions you are currently taking medication for and see if there are alternative, non-drug treatments for your conditions. Then talk to your doctor about your options. You may discover you have more options than you think
Here are some common conditions that many people are taking medication for and some suggestions as to what you can do about them.
Clinical Depression
As suggested above, talk to your doctor. There are a host of factors when it comes to major depression, and you should not take any rash actions. It is likely that your doctor has you on a medication “cocktail” to help provide the best quality of life possible. If you are wanting to change or discontinue your “cocktail” ask your doctor what the best way to proceed is and what effects you might experience along the way.
Do not do anything without talking to your doctor.
High Cholesterol
There are two major components to high cholesterol: a genetic component (in some cases) and a biological component. I say “biological” instead of “dietary” because it is unclear how much of a role dietary cholesterol plays in cardiovascular disease42,43,44. One thing is clear, though, a diet that includes lots of plants is good for you.
It is also clear that even if you have a genetic component for high cholesterol that exercise can benefit your cholesterol levels. So go exercise most days; not only can it help your cholesterol, it can help your mood and energy levels.
If you’re on a statin to manage your cholesterol, ask your doctor if dropping the statin for a while might be an option in favor of eating a healthy diet and exercising. If your doctor agrees to the experiment, keep a journal of what you are eating, how much you are exercising and how you are feeling while off the statin. When you return to your doctor’s office after the experiment, give him an overview of how things went. Then, get a blood panel that includes cholesterol values so your doctor can see how your cholesterol levels have changed (or if they have).
Low Testosterone
If you have (or suspect you have) what is considered low testosterone, ask yourself: am I exercising enough? Am I eating a healthy diet? How am I managing my stress? How am I sleeping?
The questions above point to the major causes of low testosterone in men. Given what we’ve talked about above in terms of jobs, it’s likely that you’re not getting enough exercise, you’re having trouble managing your stress in a healthy way and your sleep may not be great or you may not be getting enough sleep.
Here are some things you can do to raise your testosterone instead of taking a hormone:
- Pump some iron: weight lifting and other forms of resistance training have been found to be the best type of exercise to increase testosterone levels over both the short and long term in men. It has also been suggested that taking caffeine and creatine monohydrate may help as well.
- Eat correctly: both overeating and dieting can impact your testosterone levels. Make sure you are eating enough protein, carbs, and fats to help your body create testosterone. If you’re not eating right, your body does not have the raw materials to create testosterone.
- Minimize stress: undergoing long-term stress is one of the major ways to disrupt testosterone production in your body. If you are one of the many who is under constant stress, find ways to balance your lifestyle to reduce stress. Oh, and eat right, exercise and…
- Get quality sleep: if you’re getting less than seven to ten hours of sleep per night, it’s time to start changing that pattern. If you’re waking up after seven to ten hours of sleep groggy and feel groggy throughout the day, talk to your doctor; you may have a sleep disorder and not know it.
- Take some natural testosterone boosters: doctors have found ashwaganda to be very helpful in boosting testosterone production. Other herbs that may be effective in boosting testosterone production are horny goat weed, Mucuna pruriens, shilajit and tongkat ali. If you decide to take these, though, ask your doctor where you can find quality sources for these herbs. Not every source is of the same quality.
- Avoid estrogen-like compounds: remember those phytoestrogens in beer? Avoid them. Also avoid drinking from plastic bottles; there are chemicals in the plastics that are estrogen-like and can interfere in testosterone production.
- Laugh, be happy and succeed: believe it or not, laughter may just be the best medicine. It has been found, along with being happy and enjoying success, to boost testosterone.
- Get some sun: there are many benefits of getting sun including boosting testosterone. Live somewhere there’s not a lot of natural sun? Try taking Vitamin D345. Just remember to take your D3 according to the instructions on the package.
As you can see, there are a lot of things to try before you take a hormone. Get to it!
Erectile Dysfunction
If you are dealing with erectile dysfunction, go see a doctor. If your cholesterol is out of whack, follow the advice in the previous section.
Remember: erectile dysfunction can indicate systemic atherosclerosis. You need to take care of the underlying problem. If there is no physical problem indicated, ask your doctor if you should be looking at mental blocks.
Constant Tracking
This one’s easy: stop using a smartphone. There are minimalist phones out there (like this one) that will allow you to make calls and send text messages without tracking your movements.
Ah, you say, but I still need to email. Yes, but is a phone the best tool for email? Personally, I do better emailing on a desktop or laptop where I have access to a full-sized keyboard. A laptop or tablet is also convenient for installing other apps that will no longer be on your phone.
On the subject of email, try this: set aside an hour or two to answer all of your emails every day. If someone needs to find you urgently, they can call or text you. There’s no need to answer emails as soon as they come in.
And without all of those constant dings, do you think you might also be able to focus more?
Vaccines
You need to make your own call on this. Personally, I do not like vaccines/flu shots and do not take them.
One way to decide is this: what are the potential risks of receiving a vaccine versus the potential risks and consequence of the actual disease that the vaccine protects against? If you feel it is less risky to receive the vaccine, get it.
Mental Slavery
Education
Try taking courses that contribute to making you a better human being. This could include Harville Hendrix’s Safe Conversations, a course on depth psychology, or learning how to set healthy boundaries.
You may also want to explore spirituality, define what your personal ethics are, and many more areas that contribute to making you a unique individual. The idea is to learn things that help you become more yourself so you can help others. If you have children (and also possess the resources and inclination), you may want to look into Montessori schools or other educational approaches for them.
The whole idea is to explore. And isn’t that a better idea of education?
Political Correctness
In my view, political correctness is rooted in a desire to please others. I don’t believe in it. I think that you should say what’s on your mind. The other person’s reaction is going to be based on what they perceived I said, not what I actually said.
I’m not saying be an offensive jerk. I am saying don’t be afraid to say what’s on your mind if it’s necessary to do so.
News Reporting
If the news disturbs you, consider taking a break from it. You may also want to explore other news outlets, such as The Epoch Times which at least tries to give a more balanced view of what is happening in the world.
Personally, I like to disconnect from the news. If something is important enough, I’ll hear about it from other people and can do my own research if it’s an issue I want to explore further.
Emotional Slavery
It’s ironic that men place such emphasis on being in control when most of the time they’re being towed around by their emotions. Even more ironic? A lot of men don’t think they have many emotions. They do, and they’re not doing anyone any favors by being unaware of them.
As human beings, we need to learn how to relate to our feelings. The most common way I see people relating to their feelings is reflexively. What does that mean? That means that when something happens, a feeling arises and they act on that feeling, much like your leg jumps when the doctor hits the right spot with a reflex hammer.
Acting reflexively, or reacting as it is more commonly known, is not the best way to deal with feelings. By reacting, you are letting your feelings master you instead of you mastering your feelings.
It is difficult, but possible, to act instead of react when feelings arise. It is even possible to choose a different feeling if we don’t want to express the one that is arising. In order to act and choose, though, we must cultivate an awareness of what goes on when a feeling arises.
The process goes like this: an event occurs, we begin thinking about the event and a feeling arises as a result of our thinking about the event, which suggests an action to take. If we can pause when a feeling arises then we can choose what to do with that feeling. If a feeling that is not useful in our current situation comes up, such as anger, we can simply say “Nope, not today anger” and choose to reframe the event so that another feeling, such as acceptance, replaces the anger and is acted on instead.
By taking the time to observe what is happening within us, we can respond instead of react. When we start responding, we will notice that our relationships with others start to improve. This is partially because we are no longer blaming others for our feelings. We stop saying things like “You make me so mad when you do that” and instead say something like “When you do that, I feel angry. Can we talk about it for a moment?” Instead of pushing others away, we’re letting them know we value their part of the relationship.
What if our feelings are so intense, we feel like we’re going to explode? Then it’s time to walk away and cool off. All you have to say is “I can’t interact right now. Please give me a few minutes before we continue.” Then walk away and start talking yourself down to a calmer state. Once you feel more grounded and able to not be possessed by your feelings, resume the interaction you were having. Say “Thanks for giving me that time.” and resume.
In both cases, what we’re engaging in is pattern interruption. By interrupting our habitual patterns that do not serve us, we gain the ability to start creating new and healthier habits for ourselves. If we don’t interrupt our negative patterns, those patterns (and their consequences) will continue to play out in our lives.
By working on our real-life relationships and creating healthier patterns of behavior we’ll also reduce the need to engage with social media. We’ll be getting validation from the right place — real people.
Speaking of validation, let’s talk about it for a moment. There are two types of validation: self-validation and the validation of others. While it is important to receive some validation from others, it is also important to be able to give ourselves validation.
What does each type of validation look like? Validation from others is perhaps easiest: when someone is giving us feedback and encouragement, they are giving us validation. It’s healthy to get this validation — except when we start basing our lives around receiving it, as often happens on social media when people start basing their self-worth on whether their posts get likes.
Which brings us to the other kind of validation: self-validation. This is the process alluded to earlier where you notice what emotion is arising, observe it without judging it (this can be done by stating objective facts about the experience), and then use this observation to reflect on why the event that happened elicited this particular emotion; you may want to check in with your body here, as reactions in the body can give us clues to our emotional states. Finally, we need to accept that having emotions, even ones that don’t seem reasonable, is normal.
It’s harder to self-validate, though, when our idea of what is normal is shaped by outside forces such as social media. That’s why it’s so important to interact with real people — to find out what the natural range of human emotion is by hearing real people describe their genuine emotions.
By knowing what the actual range of human emotion is, being able to accept that we have emotions and stopping ourselves for judging ourselves harshly no matter what arises — then we find true emotional freedom.
Sexual Slavery
Pornography
If you are using pornography as a way to deal with sexual urges — stop. You are not doing something that is harmless; at the very least you are damaging your own psyche. Instead of having a one-sided relationship with porn, try to explore the joys of actual human relationships.
There’s a well-known phenomenon that happens when you have become addicted to porn: real people and real relationships seem less satisfying than the porn. If this is the situation you find yourself in, please seek the help of a competent mental health professional. They can help you to create healthier sexual expressions.
It may happen that as you go forward with a genuine relationship you find yourself stuck in how to express yourself healthfully. Again, a counselor can help with this area of your life. You may also want to do some reading about boundaries, codependence and how to have difficult conversations with people.
There are many resources out there to help, including books and courses. A quick Google search may even turn up a few events in your area that deal with these topics. If that is the case, my advice is to take advantage of these events if you can. Remember: it’s always easier to practice on real people (even if you don’t immediately get the results you expect) than it is to just read books about these subjects.
Jobs
As bad as traditional jobs are for people (and men in particular) it is also true that not everyone is cut out to be an entrepreneur. It takes a certain mindset and skill set to succeed as an entrepreneur and it can take years to acquire them. It also takes a fair amount of bravery.
What everyone can do, however, is ask themselves this question: am I doing what I love, or am I merely marking time? If you’re just showing up to a job to collect a paycheck, this much is clear: you are not doing your best at your job, and the stress of doing that job is probably higher than that of a job you would enjoy. At some point, your employer will notice and you will be looking for another job anyway.
So don’t let it get to that point. Start actively looking for something else to do now, not when your employer fires you. Explore as many different fields as you can by reading about them in your spare time, attending seminars on the weekends — whatever it takes to determine if that field would be a better fit for you.
And when you find it? Go for it!
Technological Slavery
Technologists used to promise that technology was going to make life easier for all of us. So easy, in fact, that we could cease doing mindless work and let the machines do it for us while we turned our attention to making the world a better place.
They can’t promise that anymore because we can patently see that our lives are complicated by technology, not helped by it. We are always available (even though most of us have no real need to be), always reachable, always trackable. We’re constantly having to keep our technologies up to date to keep them from being misused by bad actors; even if we can do this, the bad actors seem to find flaws in our technology that they can exploit faster than we can patch the holes. We’re the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dike — the problems persist despite our best efforts.
Then we have shiny object syndrome. We’ve got to have the latest gadget that the media is making a big fuss over. Do we need to have it to live better lives? No, just to keep up with the Joneses.
Are you tired of this yet? I know I am. In the past I’ve been guilty of wanting to have the lastest, coolest gadgets. More recently, though, I’ve begun to see things differently. I’m tired of being in thrall to the devices that I’m buying (supposedly) to help myself.
Instead, I’ve begun asking myself: how can I reclaim my life from my technology? I’ve begun to see just how much of a toll the constant distractions of just one device, my smartphone, have taken on my ability to concentrate. Where once I could sit down and work for hours at a time on a project, now I have trouble going a few minutes without having my attention pulled by my smartphone.
And the distraction doesn’t stop if I turn the smartphone off. You see, just as Pavlov’s dog was conditioned to salivate when it heard a bell, my mind has been trained by my smartphone to be easily distracted even when I’m without it. It’s a form of technology-induced ADHD which I aim to rid my life of.
How? By simplifying. I’m not quite ready to throw out all technology, but here is what I’m willing to do right now: increase the number of devices I carry, but reduce the distraction. How? By buying a phone that allows me to make calls and send text messages and a laptop that allows me to do everything else.
Instead of having one device that is always pulling me, I’ll have the ability to choose when to do things like email, etc. through my laptop and my phone will allow me to be reachable by those I want to be reached by. Neither device, however, will have functioning GPS. I’m tired of being tracked.
I’m also looking into ways to opt out of the big email systems; you know, the ones that are subject to PRISM as we discussed earlier. I see no reason for anyone other than me to have access to my emails. If they want to find out what I’m emailing about they can use the legal system to get a search warrant; barring that legal relief, I don’t want to give anyone complete access to my electronic life.
Finally, I’m working more exercise into my life so I can get more natural sunlight. Human beings aren’t meant to be indoors as much as we are, and I like being in the sun. I feel better, I look better, and I get to push my body to do things I wouldn’t otherwise be able to do. It’s great fun and necessary for human life.
If this sounds like an approach you’d like to try, I encourage you to do so. Or experiment to find what works best for you. The point is to reclaim your time and attention so that you can do what you really want to do — without being pulled away by minutiae.
Endnotes
- http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1369125/
- http://www.huffpost.com/entry/malady-mongers-how-drug-companies-sell-treatments-by-inventing-diseases_n_5b1ab5e4e4b0adfb8268c762
- http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2935455/
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- http://www.healthline.com/nutrition/8-ways-to-boost-testosterone#1.-Exercise-and-Lift-Weights
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