I want to say something to young men: First, know that I love you, that I care about you, that I believe in you, and that I genuinely want the best for you. The way that society has turned you into scapegoats for all of it's problems and turned you into a punching bag for every other group is indefensible, and I think future historian will look back on this era and see the treatment of young men as deeply shameful. As I have been watching young men get abused by the culture, I noticed that a number of influencers on the right were looking to take advantage of the anger young men feel at being treated this way. These influences feed young men a steady diet of outrage, negativity, and black-pills as a way to get engagement for themselves on social media, and to gin up anger among young men so the influencers can harness it for social and political ends. This has had the effect of demoralizing a lot of young men and poisoning them with cynicism, bitterness, and resentment. This has had a terrible effect on young men, because anger stirred up by black pills doesn't turn into responsible political action, it turns into a really destructive form a cynical nihilism. When that happens you don't get a an effective army of political soldiers that engages in productive change, you get a swarm of directionless young men engaging in chaos and destruction. Jordan Peterson gave a lecture on the movie Pinocchio where he talked about a group of boys at a place called pleasure island, who spend all their time drinking, smoking, and destroying everything. As they do so, they fall under a curse that turns them into Jackasses. Peterson said that this was a metaphor of how when young men pursue immediate gratification at the expense of the development of their character, they become slaves to their desires and they lose the ability to develop their capacity to pursue what is higher and greater. They become like animals who just pursue their immediate desires and while surrendering to their most destructive instincts. This is what happens to young men who get poisoned by black pills and nihilism. When you tell young men that things are hopeless and constantly bombard them with negativity and hopelessness and encourage them to motivated by anger, rage, bitterness, and resentment, you are training them to indulge their baser instincts and rot their souls by pursuing the immediate gratification. Men like that don't engage in political action, they engage in the constant venting of their rage and doing whatever feels cathartic in the moment. This is happening a LOT on the right. A lot of men who first showed up when they were under 40, have gone from having something really important to say, and saying it well, to peddling conspiracies, outrage, anger, nihilism and cynicism all day, while reveling in their ability to say edgy things and offend people. Its the political influencer podcast equivalent of pleasure island; only they get their pleasure from tearing down everyone who they blame (sometimes even correctly) for holding them back, and attacking anyone on the right who isn't as black-pilled as they are. And what I want to tell young men is that regardless of how good it may feel, gratifying your anger by hurling invective at the groups you blame for the terrible circumstance young men really are under is not a solution - and it's going to rot your soul. Anger is not a plan, black pilling is not a solution, and cynical nihilism dressed up as "telling it like it is" will never put anything right. I know this because I have gone through everything you are going through now: turned down for jobs in favor of people less qualified then me, scapegoated for things I didn't do, excluded from opportunities I had earned, pas over for promotions in favor of people with lower metrics and less seniority because management wanted to fulfill "diversity requirements," I could go on. On top of all that, when I was 11 my mom left my father and kept me from him for nearly a decade, and my sons mom waged an 8 month battle to keep my son from me. Believe me, my life bears all the scars from the things our culture does to young men. So, please trust me when I say I've been there...in fact I am there. However, giving into the despair, wallowing in resentment and bitterness, and lashing out in anger are not solutions. Things almost never change on the basis of action fueled by anger and resentment. The sort of change you want happens when you do the sort of things that Jordan Peterson talks about: clean up your life, take as much responsibility as you can, becomes as competent as you can, aim up, and start fixing the things in your immediate vicinity while building your character. I know that isn't what a many people want to hear because the kind of change that produces is slow in the making and does nothing to scratch the itch for revenge that so many young men have. I know you all want change, and God knows I do as well, but we are not going to get it by saturating our souls with resentment an bitterness. There are going to be people who claim I am trying to merely convince you to back to being ineffective, or to accept your lot in life as is. No. I am not telling you to do that. What I am telling you is that letting yourself be swallowed bitterness, resentment, cynicism, and nihilism isn't going to help you. You're not any closer to fixing things when you let yourself be demoralized by more negativity coming through your phone. I know things are bad, but marinating in nihilism and letting ourselves be demoralized is not going to fix anything. Jordan Peterson once said that opportunity lurks wherever responsibility has been abdicated, and responsibility has been abdicated everywhere in our society, and in my view that means there has to be opportunities lurking. I fully believe that the young men who have been cast aside from society have the capacity to take this time we have in the social and cultural wilderness to build the next great thing, because it is there calling in life to do so. There is no denying that being tossed aside and scapegoated sucks, but it also means that there is an enormous well of taken from which to draw on to build the next great industry, artistic movement, philosophy, technological advancement, or religious revival. There are enormous numbers of young men who are being overlooked, who have the capacity to get together and build something great. So the attitude we ought to take is not "it's hopeless," the attitude we ought to take is "we are going to become so successful that you will no longer be able to stuff us down." Anon, you were born to late to explore the earth and born to early to explore the galaxy, but you were born just in time to save western civilization, and that's not a bad deal all things considered. "God has made us what we are. He has created us in Christ Jesus to live lives filled with good works that he has prepared for us to do" (Ephesians 2:10). /fin