Fuck Nice Guys.

Recently I’ve come across quite a few mini-rants on the internet from so-called “former nice guys” who are sick of being walked-over by selfish women, and have made the decision to take refuge in cynicism.

They write fed-up manifestos and construct intricate alpha-male dating stances that rival “The Rules” for artificiality and self-contradiction. They pretend to each other that they know “how women think” and “what women really want”, as though women are some many-headed yet singular monster. And they decide, startlingly, that treating women like crapola is a way to win their respect and interest. Sort of a “shock and awe” style of dating.

I understand this. After several abusive relationships with men much like the ones these former “nice guys” decide to emulate, I totally comprehend feeling the need to come up with a set of rules to protect oneself against abuse and powerlessness. I get the temptation to become bitter and cynical, and to draw strength from lumping the other gender together and putting them down. “Men are stupid pigs.” “Women are money grubbing bitches.”

Problem is, it ain’t real power.

That rush you get from deciding others are beneath you, from assuming you know their minds, and from treating them like shit to get their attention—it’s a destructive rush. It will destroy your chances of getting with a quality person. It will destroy, eventually, any relationship you do get into, bad or good. And ultimately, it will destroy you, and any chance you may have to grow as a person.

What’s a negative attitude about relationships and women get you? Shitty relationships with women who feel at home being put down. It may make you feel stronger, for an instant. It may win you more opportunities to stick your penis into a vagina than tact did. Sooner or later, though—if you’re worth anything at all—you’ll want more than this out of your human interactions. And then you’ll be stuck in a dark rut far more unattractive than your false kindness was.

I submit that if you feel bitter that your niceness didn’t get you what you wanted, then you weren’t actually being a genuinely good person. You were engaging in an attempt to socially ingratiate yourself to someone for personal gain. That’s the opposite of “nice”. Real kindness is for its own sake, and is its own reward, even if you gain nothing from it but your own satisfaction. This is called “true character”. It is immediately noticeable, and far more attractive than ass-kissing.

Decent women want you to already BE a good person, not just act like one, or make a big deal about how you’re “trying”. And the older we get, the better we can see through bullshit. True, the good ones of us develop more compassion, just like you have. But we have less patience to go along with it.

Good women are worth being friends with, even if they don’t let you stick your willy in them. If you can’t handle this, or don’t feel that it’s worth your time, that’s your emotional handicap, not hers.

(This goes for “disease to please” women, too. If you aren’t honest with yourself first, you’re the worst kind of liar.)

What’s in my bag? (holiday purse edition)

Fall Semester 2007.

What’s in my bag–finals week edition

Happy birthday, Mister Wilde…

“Do you really think it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations which it requires strength, strength and courage to yield to.”

It Could Have Been You

See, I believe the darkness in me to be inevitable to a human experience, but unnatural on a soul level. On a soul level, darkness is a willful corruption that should be fought, not cynically accepted and indulged in. I have seen corruption in places I expected to find purity—who wouldn’t hide their horror and confusion under snarky dismissal, and rebellious indulgence in questionable delights?

I’m beginning to believe that this decade has mostly been about rebellion against the light—begun in 2000 and continuing to this day. Oh sure, we’ve as a society made sure to manufacture reasons and rationales; but don’t for a second doubt that they were manufactured. The anti-PC, anti-spiritual backlash against thirty years of personal advancement as a society—including the forced association of all spirituality with religious fanaticism or naivete–was more about the inconvenience of giving a shit, than it was about freedom or common sense.

And I’m beginning to perceive that I’ve been caught up in it too, that psychic looting and burning: “Fuck the New Agers, I’m gonna go do Jager shots and listen to AC/DC.” Yes, sex, drugs, and rock’n'roll are a part of my spirituality and path. But so is a certain lightness, a certain brightness, a certain sincerity that has nothing to do with innocence or naivete.

Yes, much of the world sucks right now. Yes, much is worse than it used to be, even earlier in my brief lifetime. Yes, we might actually have doomed ourselves—our society, our species, the planet. So? There’s still a choice, there always has been and always will be. And it’s not a hopeless fight. No matter how slim the chances of making a real difference, let alone turning things around, the right heroic attitude might blow that door wide open— might render the nearly-impossible, suddenly inevitable. Is it not worth doing? Is it not worth sacrificing everything for?

Even a soulmate?

Summer Term 2007, FSU…