Gents, honestly, last weekend was pretty damned rough for me, for a number of personal reasons. So it was with great surprise and considerable pleasure that I received not one, but two emails from readers expressing appreciation for my work.

The first conversation resulted in yesterday’s guest post from Jack Vitel, which I am sure y’all appreciated and enjoyed. He’s a good guy who teaches men how to be strong and resilient, so give his blog a look and glean his wisdom.

The second email that came to me on a rather challenging day was from a reader, CN, who contacted me with respect to my post about fighting the tendency that we all have towards despair and nihilism.

With CN’s permission, I reprint the essentials of his email here, though I have heavily edited it to remove all consequential personal details and maybe make the language “flow” a little more:

Hi Didact,

I just want to thank you for providing some clarity and perspective, I really enjoyed your “Antidotes to Despair” article, as I find myself in a somewhat similar situation… Suffice to say that the red pill was introduced to me rectally recently during some personal troubles.

Reading through your articles and description of yourself, I find that we have a few things in common, chief among these is probably the “conservative mentality”, which I can assure you is rarely found in our common ethnic group here in my country. I don’t know if this is true for those from the motherland? Another is…..common fucking sense!!!

Also, I enjoy unarmed combat and shoot with a rifle and pistol competitively. This, in spite of the fact that I am disabled and use a wheelchair. Fortunately, I still have almost normal use of my hands and mobility in my legs.

I thank God every day for the little things, only I know how much worse it could have been.

I live in Africa, and my country is basically fucked. I’m trying to bail out but the only option I have is in SE Asia, which isn’t exactly the first world but much safer than it is here at the moment. There is not much I have in common with the rest of our ethnic group. Much like yourself, I’m not a fan of their food, their movies, or their way of life.

My career is in the doldrums given my age, and there are slim pickings as far as jobs are concerned. But life goes on, I refuse to be negative and just give up, that’s why I found your article so inspirational at this point in my life.

Anyway, I visit your blog daily and thoroughly enjoy it, predictably for the Friday T&A and the fine articles. If you are interested in writing about the shithole that is my country right now, I am your man on the ground. Thank you for listening to my condensed story.

Take care my friend.

What can I say, other than: thank you.

I must certainly agree that, of course, the Friday T&A segment IS the primary reason for visits to the blog, amirite boys? I’m sure the tumbleweeds and rants that pad out the days between the Monday and Friday segments are merely useful filler.

But there is considerably more to this blog than just those segments, enjoyable though they be for most of my readers – all three and a half of them. (I’m pretty sure one is, or at least identifies as, a dog, and comes here just for the funny Garfield cartoons on Mondays.)

This blog is fundamentally about preserving Western civilisation and building for a better tomorrow. To that end, I write specifically about ways in which men can improve themselves. Better men build better societies – not to get all L. Ron Hubbard on you or anything, but it should be obvious that this is a strictly linear relationship and holds throughout all times and all places.

But you cannot build a better man without giving him hope.

This is what keeps us going. Hope makes us optimistic even when we are slogging hard and deep through the shit. Hope makes us strong when the world is tearing us to pieces. Hope makes us powerful even when our bodies are weak.

Hope is a small and terribly fragile thing – but it is remarkably hard to kill.

The Russians even have a saying on the subject: Надежда умирает последней, or “hope dies last”.

Without it, we are lost. That is why so many MGTOW types have given way to despair and simply checked out of the fight completely. They are without hope and as a result have nothing left to live for, fight for, or strive towards. They simply… coast.

They are more or less dead men. They just don’t know it yet.

But with it, we can overcome almost anything.

Every word of advice written on this blog is completely unoriginal – everything that I have written, and could possibly ever write, on any subject pertaining to masculinity and the red pill philosophy, has been written before, by far better men than me. There is literally nothing that I tell you guys that is in any way unique to me.

So why, then, do people read my writing? What would be the point?

My ego would like me to think that it is because I am a good writer. My honesty demands that I admit immediately that I am not. I am merely apparently a good enough writer that can I take messages passed down to me by far better minds and men, and put them maybe a little bit differently, so that others find my words interesting.

But, the real reason is because this blog offers solutions. It offers antidotes to despair. It offers stern, harsh, difficult life lessons that nonetheless make men better for accepting them.

And it shows, with unflinching and sometimes painful honesty, my own failures to live up to the ideals that I have set for myself.

Above all, though, this blog delivers hope. And that, ultimately, is why people read it.

No matter how bad your life is, it could always be worse. Look at CN’s example up there. The guy is in a wheelchair, and he still gets up every day and tries to do the best he can with what he has. What possible excuse can you, as a man with (presumably) full use of your limbs and a beating heart and functioning brain, give to do any less?

And that brings me to the really important point here: you have to learn to be grateful for your trials and tribulations.

Now, this sounds absolutely ridiculous on its face. It sounds absurd to be glad that you are being pushed and hounded and reviled.

But it is happening to you for a reason.

You are being pushed to see what it will take for you to go onto your knees.

At that point, you have a choice.

Either you can stay on your knees and accept the sweet poison of a life lived in service to lies. It will be a comfortable existence if you do this. You will get all that you wanted – money, wealth, power, fame, women, and so on.

All that is asked for in return is your soul.

Or you can get back up off your knees and stand for the truth. You can tell that truth in kindness where possible, but sometimes you will have to tell the truth with brutal and terrible honesty and frankness. And you will fail to live up to your own professed values more often than you care to count. You will be revealed as a hypocrite more than once. You will be beaten down by life again, and again, and again. You will face a life of unrelenting suffering and pain.

But you will be free.

That, ultimately, is the choice before us all – to live on our knees for lies, or to die on our feet for truth.

It is an even harder choice than it sounds, and it so happens that no matter which one you choose, you are in for suffering, pain, heartbreak, and disappointment.

The difference lies in the ways in which you will recover from those setbacks.

If you accept the hard and narrow path, then I promise you, my friend, that you will bounce back faster and more easily than you ever thought possible. You will pay a terrible price for your mistakes, but you will recover and you will have hope.

Be grateful for those times when you are tested, because when you are pushed and tested to the limits of your endurance, and you do run into those inevitable moments of deep, soul-killing disappointment when all that you ever believed was found wanting, then the way in which you respond to those moments will determine whether you have any further capacity for hope.

For me, that email from CN is a sign that everything that I do is worthwhile – because just as I give others hope, so too do emails and messages from readers give me hope.

Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you.

— 1 Peter 4:12-14, English Standard Version