I am very pleased to present another guest poast from LRFotS Randale6, who has submitted a short article in a style reminiscent of the old Return of Kings site that our old friend Roosh V used to maintain. That site has long since gone into hibernation, and is almost certainly never coming back in any realistic form. Indeed, the Manosphere, as a “thing”, is essentially a dead letter nowadays. But the core philosophy remains, and indeed has become largely mainstream at this point. The wisdom simply needs to be distributed, remembered, and acted upon. And that is where our friend’s article comes in. This one is all about understanding and controlling your emotions.
As always, I am most grateful to our friend for his continued contributions to our little community here.
Emotional Regulation
A Manosphere Article
Emotional regulation is one of the defining attributes of any man and goes a long way to determining the social position he occupies. Being able to regulate your emotions is thus key to success, regardless of where you started off. I must note something here, one should not mistake emotional regulation for just Stoicism (which is merely one tool within the former’s toolbox).
Tools of the Trade
Channelling: Doing this with your emotions comes down to making them work for you, rather than you working for them. Rage, for instance, is highly useful in a fight, it gives you strength uninhibited by the body’s normal safeguards, it can also make you resistant or even immune (look at the accounts of Viking berserkers) to pain.
Channelling is neither inferior to nor superior to Emotional Alchemy or Stoicism – it is less of way of doing things, and more a tool to achieve one’s goals.
Emotional Alchemy: this is the transformation of one type of emotion into another, a classic example is transmuting your anger (a hot emotion) of your boss into hatred (a cold emotion) towards him. Emotional Alchemy is of course inferior to Stoicism, in the same way that a kitchen knife from Vietnam is inferior to one made in Japan… but a kitchen knife from Vietnam is still better than no knife at all.
Think of the classic example of a man with poor emotional regulation, the Gamma male. Is the Gamma better off blowing up like a volcano or silently seething like an ice river? It is difficult to conceal the hot emotions, it is far easier to conceal the cold ones.
Stoicism: perhaps the gold standard of emotional regulation, Stoicism is also the hardest tool to master. Many men will either be fully or partially incapable of the Stoic way. Others will struggle with it for many years, rather like an inexperienced mountain climber trying to reach the summit of Mount Everest. To a rare, fortunate few, it comes naturally.
In the ideal (aka philosophical) sense, peak Stoicism is the suppression of all emotions, it is the triumph of the conscious will over the subconscious impulse.
[This last is not quite true – I will get to the reasons why below. – Didact]
The Tools in Action
Using fear of others to become stronger: At first glance it would seem that fear cannot have any possible use for a man, of the all the emotions you can experience this is the one that should be suppressed the most according to conventional thinking… Yet this view is incorrect.
The classic individual example of fear being beneficial to man is none other than Charles Atlas himself. By his own account his fear and insecurity over being a 97-pound shrimp (his height came in at 5’10” inches, for perspective) led him to become one of the strongest men in the world (and to this day the leading authority in bodyweight exercises).
The collective example is provided by Israel and North Korea, both nations live in less than safe neighbourhoods (for very different reasons) and must practice constant vigilance with regards to their neighbourhood. Both nations developed nuclear arsenals, giving them far more power than their otherwise small and resource poor countries would afford them. All of this came about from their fear and paranoia.
Saruman and Grima Wormtongue from The Lord of the Rings series: Saruman and Wormtongue are perhaps some of the best Gammas ever depicted in literature and film, the former being the “top” of the archetype and the latter being the very bottom.
The reason for this is simple, Wormtongue cannot control himself, he is the Gamma rage volcano incarnate. Saruman, by contrast, can control himself to a large extent – make no mistake, he does blow up in both the books and the films, but it’s rare. Saruman for the most part transmutes his hot emotions into cold ones, displaying a Stoic front even without being a Stoic himself.
Yi Sun-sin: Yi Sun-sin was the most famous Korean Admiral ever to live, he demonstrated Stoicism even on his death bed so that his men might not be discouraged by his death in the midst of battle. Mortally wounded by a stray bullet from the Japanese fleet Yi commanded his nephew and son to hide him in his quarters, the nephew would then take up his uncle’s armour and beat the war drums.
No other man in the Korean fleet (or the Japanese one for that matter) became aware of Yi’s demise until after the Battle of Noryang. This is not just a great example of one man’s Stoicism, it is the example of an entire family. Both his nephew and son refused to succumb to grief, instead they played their part in securing victory over the Japanese.
With Didactic Authority
Once again, many thanks to our friend for his continued excellent contributions to this site. I believe the list above is a very solid set of suggestions around how to build greater and deeper emotional resilience and regulation. It is, however, necessary to explain a few connections that might be missing.
First, you must understand that, to be a complete man, your mind AND your body have to work together. A strong mind both requires and develops, by necessity, a strong body to house it. Strength of mind requires strength of will, and this generally lends itself to the development of a strong body.
Now, to be clear, this does NOT require you to become a bodybuilder, or an elite-level powerlifter. I am neither of these things. Yet I can comfortably squat and deadlift (though not bench press) more weight than about 90% of the men that I see around me.
You also do not need to become an elite-level martial artist or physical combatant. Again, I am not, but I can keep up with kids half my age when sparring – and, in many cases, overwhelm them with both precision and power – in muay thai or boxing sparring. And this is despite the fact that I am very rusty and have not sparred seriously in well over 18 months.
How does one do this? By understanding that emotional channelling and regulation become much easier when you have physical outlets and means for release of your anger, humiliation, frustration, and other negative emotions.
This can come in the form of bodyweight exercises, lifting heavy things, martial arts, hiking, running, cycling, shooting, cutting down trees, hitting things with sticks – really, any reasonably intensive physical activity. (EXCEPT CROSSSHIT. Friends do not let friends take up CrossShit. Not ever.)
The point is not to become an elite athlete. The point is instead to learn how to move one’s negative emotions out of one’s life in positive ways.
Nor is this a complete panacea for such negativity. You will not be able to get rid of such feelings completely, especially if you are suffering from a truly severe psychological blow – such as the recent death of a loved one, the total loss of one’s job and career, a bad divorce or breakup, and so on.
For such moments, you can AND SHOULD seek some degree of skilled professional help. I used to be very anti-therapy, but I can say that a really good psychological therapist can help you by simply holding up a mirror to your psyche, and letting you work out your own problems through dialogue and inner exploration. (There is danger involved, though – a bad therapist will give you advice, and much of it will reinforce your own negative habits. Avoid such therapists at all costs.)
Second, the point above about peak Stoicism being the complete detachment from all emotions, is incorrect. The great Stoics of the past – especially Marcus Aurelius – pointed out repeatedly that Stoicism is not about refusing to feel any emotions whatsoever, thereby becoming an emotionless robot. Stoicism is instead about refusing to let your emotions control you. There is a huge difference.
The problem with the idea of letting go of ALL emotions, is that it inevitably leads one to the supposed path of “enlightenment” proposed by vain philosophies like Buddhism and Hinduism – which, once you strip away the mysticism and superstition, really don’t have very much to offer at all. The quintessential example of the incoherence of Buddhism – and I mean no disrespect here, despite the wording – is the Dalai Lama himself. Ask him, if you ever meet him, whether one should simply let go of the desire for a free and independent Tibet, in line with the teachings of Buddhist philosophy, and you will find out VERY quickly just how not detached Buddhists can be.
True Stoicism does not mean you do not feel great anger, pain, hatred, urges to violence, or other passions. Instead, true Stoicism involves channelling, if you will, those emotions in a controlled manner, so they do not control YOU. Express them, swiftly and at great volume, if you must – but let it be a “one-and-done” deal. And then, carry on with your life, because true Stoicism means you accept the things you cannot change, and work instead with and on what you can change.
In this aspect, it is the “grin-and-bear-it” solution to the Problem of Evil. It is, as I have written before, the almost-solution:
The only issue with Stoicism is that it lacks any substantial promise of an end to the suffering and the pain. For that, you need to focus relentlessly on ONLY those things which are the Good, the Beautiful, and the True.
And, if you are honest in this pursuit, you will eventually come to THE Truth, the Logos, the eternal Word was in the beginning, and was with God, and which was and is God. The Word, which became flesh, and dwelt amongst us, and some of us have beheld its glory.
1 Comment
I will always recommend “The Wall Speaks” by Jerr. Like he says, you can feel, but only in a controlled manner. Don’t be too attached to your emotions. Then you will have the freedom to feel, or not feel, as you deem appropriate.