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Why Age is Irrelevant to Wisdom: Be a Wise Old Man

The old stereotype of the wise old man is becoming less and less of a reality, as more and more men from an extremely unwise generation (Baby Boomers) become old, and then attempt to impart what they consider “wisdom”. In essence, the majority of aged men today are foolish, and the “wise old man” makes up the minority of the elderly population.

The “Wise Old Man” is an image that has faded into nothingness because men can live full lives and grow old without accumulating any wisdom.

“Let no one despise your youth, but be an example to the believers in word, in conduct, in love, in spirit, in faith, in purity.”
1 Timothy 4:12

“Wisdom is with the aged, and understanding in length of days”.
Job 12:12

Weak Men in the Church have two philosophies when it comes to a discussion about age. There is the group that thinks the young can do nothing simply because they are young. Then there are the old men who think they don’t have to do anything because they are “too old” and that the young should do everything. So they just sit around and complain about the state of the world, never getting off their fat, lazy buttocks to do anything about.

The old stereotype of the wise old man is becoming less and less of a reality, as more and more men from an extremely unwise generation become old, and then attempt to impart what they consider “wisdom”.

In essence, the majority of aged men today are foolish, and the “wise old man” makes up the minority of the elderly population. It is no longer safe to take advice from just any old guy, because there is no longer a guarantee that he is actually wise.

The young man has an extreme hunger for wisdom, or at least rational thought, and it is not being supplied by the older men in the Church. The rise of great intellectual thinkers like Dr. Jordan Peterson are proof of this. Examine the demographics of the audience of Dr. Peterson and you will find it is all young men in the 20-34 year age bracket. The so-called “millennials” have created a demand for wisdom and rational thought. They have created a demand for intellectualism instead of the “Church standard” of emotionalism or dogma. Emotion and tradition are for the weak. The young have become wiser because they pursue the rational.

Men can use their brains no matter what age they are. Old age does not automatically confer wisdom, at least not anymore. Old people advise young men to go to college so they can “get a good job”. That may have worked back in the day when only 5-10% of individuals had college degrees. Today that number is closer to 33% or more and it is rising rapidly. Going to college is not a foolproof plan for success in life as it once was in the past, but the aged have not mentally adapted to the times and the new era. All men must adapt or die.

All of this is to say that age is not relevant to being a wise old man.

You cannot excuse yourself from God’s work because of your age. You do not get to sit in the pew merely radiating heat from your buttocks and try to count that as your contribution to the Church. Conversely, your youth is not an excuse to avoid work. You cannot consider being in the “youth group” a contribution to the Church. Youth groups have done more harm to young men than arguably anything else. Because it wasn’t enough for young men to be around their peers eight hours per day at state sponsored indoctrination camps, otherwise known as “school”, but now in addition to that they have to spend time around people their age in the Church as well. Young men will adapt to whatever circumstances they are in by blending in with their environment. They will not “rise to the occasion” or be the “light of the world”, they will act like who they spend the most time with. Spend time with men of character, no matter what age they are.

Mantra

Age is irrelevant. Adapt or die.

Application

Work to stop judging the value of someone’s opinions based on how old they are. Age alone does not dictate what is truth just as consensus does not determine truth. Age is irrelevant when it comes to wisdom. The fact that there are so many unwise old men is evidence of this. Wisdom is not acquired passively, you must think rationally and integrate experience.

Consider the merit of the ideas of others, question everything, and use your own God-given mind to determine what it is that you believe.

Do your best to gain knowledge and experience while you are young and learn to think before you are old. Make it a goal to be the Wise Old Man. Keep your mind as active as possible. Accept nothing that anyone says without first examining it with the highest levels of intensity. Question every facet of everything you hear.

Study human beings and human nature. Learn how people operate and discover the political games they play even in the Church. Gain self-awareness by examining yourself daily. Evaluate your character every day by looking for your flaws.

Conduct yourselves like Men.

Blind Faith

Man will question what he believes; to deny this is to deny human nature. Man needs substance: to see, feel, hear, and experience. Faith provides none of these, which is why it is called “faith” and not “knowledge”.

Blind faith is popular in the beta church. It requires no work and no thought. It is in the same category as people who focus far too much on grace, minimizing their own mandatory responsibility to do good works. To question the blind faith is “heresy”. To doubt the traditions of men is “apostasy”. This is what the beta male teaches his sons and followers.

“The simple believes everything, but the prudent gives thought to his steps.”
Proverbs 14:15

Tradition must be doubted because it is exactly that: mere tradition and not Biblical law.

The radical conservatives have deified tradition and liturgy and set themselves in opposition to progress and growth. “The old ways are better”. Changing one’s mind and opinion is too laborious for these lazy thinkers. Changing the mind without polluting it with pusillanimous emotions is even more difficult. For this reason the beta males have become complacent and set in their ways, never questioning what it is they believe, and claiming that those who do question the faith are blasphemous.

This is blind faith, it is a hallmark of the weak, pathetic shell of what once was masculinity, and it must be burned down. Man will question what he believes; to deny this is to deny human nature. Man needs substance: to see, feel, hear, and experience. Faith provides none of these, which is why it is called “faith” and not “knowledge”. There are people in the Church who are uncomfortable with this and would assure you that they “know” what it is they believe. The truth is that if we could know with absolute certainty what was coming after this life, there would be no need for faith. Therefore, the Creator has seen fit to test humanity by giving them just the information they need and no more. Man is free to learn what he can about the world through science in order to improve his faith, but he is still required to have some form of faith because he will forever lack 100% of the knowledge of his existence.

What men must fight against is not faith, rather having blind faith. Men must realize they are free to question what they believe, and that they should question their faith. Questioning the faith is key for growth.

If you reject blind faith, you put yourself in the 99th percentile of Christian people.

You put yourself in a different position than other betas. Now you are no longer the stereotypical, stupid Christian. You think differently, and walk and act differently as a result. Think Rationally about your faith, and that will be enough to put you far beyond the level of most beta Christians.

“Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, He must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear” – Thomas Jefferson

Mantra

I think freely, and believe that which is true.

Application

Take time to think about your faith. Not the light, easy thoughts that everyone thinks about (such as grace, hope and love), but the difficult thoughts. Why did God create man knowing ahead of time that most men would go to hell? If you cannot answer this question in your own mind, how then will you be able to answer it when others ask you? Think about the questions that make you the most uncomfortable. That discomfort is growth of the mind, and consequently, of the faith.

What most people do not realize is that the more you question your faith, the more you will be able to answer about your faith. If you ask a question about the faith and can provide yourself with a rational answer, it is no longer a question. In this way you can reduce your doubts, but you must be willing to go through the discomfort and fiercely examine your faith regularly before you can expect to acquire any of those insights.

Be very aware that most of the people in your Church have blind faith.

The only reason they still attend worship is because they are in the habit of doing so. It would only take one small plague or catastrophe to send most of them scurrying like rats back into the darkness where they already secretly live. You need to call attention to this whenever you can. Address blind faith in the comments you make. Defend the necessity of scientific thinking. Science and religion are friends.

Question with ferocity those who claim to know things for certain. The only people arrogant enough to think they have existence figured out are atheists, and they have the blindest faith of them all.

Understand that some people in the Church are going to say that you are a “bad Christian” because you are questioning your faith. Realize that those who refuse to do the labor of thinking are lazy Christians. Be willing to show these individuals the problems with their thinking. Many Christians (like most people of the world) lack even a fundamental level of self-awareness. They do not realize how inconsistent their own thinking is, and you must draw attention to those inconsistencies.

KEY: If what you believe is the truth, then you can question it as many times as you please and it will still stand strong as a rocky cliff is unmoved as it is pounded by ocean waves.

Conduct yourselves like Men.

Continue Reading: Demagogue

Learn Lessons From Secular Men

Christians think we should only model ourselves after other Christians, and never after secular men. That would be to our detriment if we were trying to learn how to be successful in the world.

“Now these things happened unto them by way of example; and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages are come.”
1 Corinthians 10:11

“If you know the way broadly, you see it in all things”
Miyamoto Musashi

Most people in the Church would shriek in horror if you so much as mentioned the idea that you have men who inspire you who are not Christians.

You are inspired by a non-religious war hero? “How dare you!”

A secular athlete inspires you to take better care of your body? “Heretic!”

A successful man of the world provides a good model for material success? “You materialistic fiend!”

The thinking in the Church is often so dogmatic and narrow minded in many facets that it handicaps the faith socially. No one wants to be around those “weird, religious people”. Who wants to spend time around people who constantly demonize the world instead of improving it.

I think there absolutely is something to be said about being a “peculiar people” as a result of behaving righteously, but we take it to a whole other level when we go out of our way to be peculiar.

It’s the difference between someone who studies to get a good grade and someone who studies to understand a subject.

In going out of our way to be peculiar we have placed the peculiarity itself above the Christian disciplines and practices that cause us to be peculiar in the first place. We make peculiarity the goal instead of making righteous the goal. Our focus should be on being Christians first and foremost, and a by-product of this lifestyle just so happens to be peculiarity.

All of this to say, it does not rob us of our peculiarity when we learn lessons from secular men, either historically or ones who still live. It is not wrong to learn from secular men, we do it all the time. It is not wrong to be inspired by secular men, because often secular men are more successful than religious men. This is a result primarily of statistics, because there are far more secular men than Christian men. It just so happens that successful people are more likely to be worldly. This does not mean we cannot still be inspired by them.

The second reason for worldly men being more successful than Christian men is the fact that the majority of 21st century Christians lack the work ethic of our Christian forerunners in earlier centuries.

People use the Bible’s command to avoid worldliness, greed, and materialism as an excuse to justify their slothfulness.

We should also remember that lessons come in two primary parts: Learning what to do, and learning what not to do. We can learn both kinds from men both inside and outside the church. Every man is a walking lesson, regardless of his spirituality. Just because someone does not have salvation does not mean we cannot learn from them. Why do you think we study history? Be a man by learning from all men.

Mantra

Every moment has a lifetime of lessons.

Application

First you have to rid yourself of prejudice. You think you are better than others because you possess salvation. Wrong. You are just as much of a loser as them. What are you without salvation? Nothing? Then your worth has nothing to do with you, and everything to do with the gift of salvation that has been given to you. Rid yourself of ego; embrace humility.

Find some role models who inspire you. You may have a hard time finding great role models in the Church.

Every Christian wants to tell you to have good role models, yet none of them want to be role models themselves.

List out men who inspire you. Write them down as a list and then to the side of each name write out the characteristics you find inspiring. No single man can be a role model of everything. Take all the traits you find most admirable and then think about what that would look like if one man possessed them all. You are now visualizing the ideal man. Try to imitate this Ideal Man every day, and you will find that you improve.

Every interaction with your fellow man is a learning opportunity. You will either learn how to be or you will learn how not to be. Both are equally valuable because they catalyze action. Learning is rooted in awareness and vigilance. You cannot capitalize on learning opportunities if you are not aware of their existence. Once you notice the lesson, you must apply it. Without these two foundational principles, growth will be limited. Be a man, learn always.

Conduct yourselves like Men.

Ego: A Defining Trait of a Weak Man

Ego is a hallmark of the beta male. Church youth groups are teeming with ego, you can smell it on them. Wherever you find ego, you can be sure you have found an individual with significant insecurity or stupidity.

Ego is a hallmark of the beta male. Church youth groups are teeming with it and you can smell it on them. Wherever you find ego, you can be sure you have found an individual with significant insecurity or stupidity. The confident man has no need of ego. Ego is an outwardly expressed overcompensation for inner emptiness.

“Pride comes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall”.
Proverbs 16:18

“The LORD Almighty has a day in store for all the proud and lofty, for all that is exalted (and they will be humbled).”
Isaiah 2:12

Ego is what some refer to as “bad pride”.

There is a good type of pride that is fulfillment in your work. There is the negative pride of ego that leads you to believe you are good at something or better than someone. Men who have even a small amount of self awareness know they can constantly improve, and so they reject any type of ego.

There are different levels of ego. The mildest is the boastful form.

This form is found in the lowest of all males; the males who no female would ever mate with. They have the need to talk about themselves or their “accomplishments”, as if anyone in a one-thousand mile radius even cares at all. These men are deluded about how impressive their accomplishments are.

Young men brag about what sport they play (because doing what hundreds of thousands of other males do obviously sets them apart).

They brag about how many girlfriends they have had or how much money they are making. They boast in superficial accomplishments that no one will remember in ten minutes, much less ten years.

Middle aged men brag about their kids. The older man’s children absorbed his entire life so now he is forced to live vicariously through them. He has no pride in what he does, only in his kids. These men do not understand how uninterested in his kids all other men are.

Older men brag about what they did ‘back in their day’ in order to justify their lack of success in the present moment. Low-level ego is spread across all age groups. Low-level ego is a marker for low character and low intelligence.

Another level of ego is the person who gets offended constantly.

Why are your ideas so important that you must be emotionally “Offended” when someone else has a different idea? Why are your philosophies so intertwined with your personality and character that an individual cannot question your ideas without questioning your personally? Here is the answer: your ideas aren’t important; consider putting your ego to death.

KEY: Any idea that is weak and built on unstable grounds must be supported by combining it with emotionalism. Atheism is a prime example of this. Atheists hold beliefs that blatantly violate natural law (Big bang = 1st & 2nd Laws of Thermodynamics, possible Newton’s 1st law, Law of Causality. Spontaneous generation = violates the Law of Biogenesis), and as a result, they are forced to become militant and emotional about their faith in order to justify it. You see this in modern politics as well, where men attack each other’s character instead of questioning one another’s ideas using rationality and a genuine desire for the truth, instead of a desire to hit the opponent with a zinger.

More subtle levels of ego would include simply being defensive at criticism. Why are you being defensive? Ego. Why do you dislike criticism? Ego. “But I have a highly sensitive personality”, no you don’t, you have a weak personality and a huge ego.

Even if you are sensitive, no man may justify his failure or a negative character trait by blaming his personality, that behavior is for the weak.

Ego is the mark of a boy, not a man. Become a man by putting the ego to death or you will die.

Mantra

I walk in humility, and my ego is fading to dust.

Application

Awareness of your own ego is going to be one of your best tools for bringing it under your power. Notice yourself boasting about your petty accomplishments, getting offended by the statements of others or becoming defensive at their criticisms. Noticing your problems is a key to victory in the war of converting those problems into power.

Some men may even find that simply by becoming aware of their ego, it went away. Men who notice it are often so disgusted by how it truly looks that they stop letting their ego determine their actions. They are able to see themselves from the outside.

How am I appearing to others?
How will this statement be taken?
Am I talking about myself in conversation?
Is my tone arrogant?

These are all questions you must ask yourself regularly to exercise the muscle of self-awareness necessary to bring your “bad pride” into submission. Ego stands in the way of your ability to gain power, both personal and worldly.

Shut down your negative character traits one at a time.

Start by killing your boasting habit if you are on that level of character development. Kill that form of ego before moving onto the more slippery and subtle manifestations. Whatever you do, utterly destroy that ego from the face of the earth.

When you interact with others with ego, do not get annoyed. Know that you have found a person with profound weakness of character. This is a man who is either insecure, stupid or both. There is no point in attacking this person directly, you will only enrage him. The way you help this individual is by taking indirect routes of attack and flanking the ego. Do not say to him, “You are really arrogant. You need to work on that ego”. You will only create an enemy if you do this. Instead, outline the benefits of being a man of humility. You have to appeal to the other person’s self-interest or they will not care what you have to say. Just know, that unless a man is willing to change and reduce his ego, there is very little point in trying to help him.

Conduct yourselves like Men

The Masculine Desire for War

Weak men in the Church have a habit of denying reality. They deny the innate need of man to wage war against something – against anything – to raise his sword and utterly destroy an enemy that stands before him, even if that enemy is himself. The desire to kill is in the nature of man.

“a time for war and a time for peace.”
Ecclesiastes 3:8b

“You are my war club, my weapon for battle— with you I shatter nations, with you I destroy kingdoms.”
Jeremiah 51:20

“Contend, LORD, with those who contend with me; fight against those who fight against me. Take up shield and armor; arise and come to my aid. Brandish spear and javelin against those who pursue me. Say to me, “I am your salvation.” May those who seek my life be disgraced and put to shame, may those who plot my ruin be turned back in dismay. May they be like chaff before the wind, with the angel of the LORD driving them away; may their path be dark and slippery, with the angel of the LORD pursuing them. Since they hid their net for me without cause and without cause dug a pit for me, may ruin overtake them by surprise— may the net they hid entangle them, may they fall into the pit, to their ruin. Then my soul will rejoice in the LORD and delight in his salvation.”
Psalm 35: 1-9

Weak men in the Church have a habit of denying reality.

They deny the innate need of man to wage war against something – against anything – to raise his sword and utterly destroy an enemy that stands before him, even if that enemy is himself. The desire to kill is in the nature of man.

The Church wants to repress the warlike nature of man in the same way they have repressed the sex drive of men for hundreds of years. They fear both because it takes away their power and control over the younger generations and over the “uncontrollable” drives of man. This is incompetence at its finest.

What happened when the Church repressed sex and refused to even mention its existence? Did it successfully suppress men’s sexual urges and increase overall sexual purity or did it cause men to push back even harder saying, “I am not listening to this blithering, the men in the Church are just as miserable as I am. I’m not waiting for sex”.

KEY: Every time the Church wants to suppress some alleged “evil”, that same evil grows even faster.

Not only does it grow, but it becomes dark and all consuming in the minds of those who suppress it until the Church loses the war against that evil. Waitingtillmarriage.org shared some data that suggested only 20% of the members of highly religious communities are successfully waiting for marriage. Does it look like sexual repression is working for the Church?

Repression does not work with sexual drives, and it will not work in subverting your warlike nature. If you are not a man who is going to engage in a real physical fight, the best you can hope for is to find a personal war into which you can channel your barbaric desire for bloodshed.

Fight your evil nature. Wage war in your work and destroy mediocrity. You must have something to fight, so make your war result in the construction of positive qualities of character.

Mantra

I Destroy whatever stands in opposition to me with strength.

Application

The internal anger you feel and the desire to go to war are incredibly powerful forces that you must channel into a constructive pursuit. If you do not channel them somewhere, they will destroy you from within. The easiest way to redirect your warlike nature is to channel it into something physical, such as training. Get your lazy, weak minded self into physical exercise. You cannot fully be a man if you do not possess some level of strength. There is no excuse for a man to be weak. It doesn’t even matter what kind of training you do, just do something. That physical training will then spill over into mental fortitude.

Wage war in the workplace. When you begin to tire and mentally accept mediocre work, call upon your aggression.

This emotion will override the desire to quit or to be lazy. When you are typing that essay for school and you want to stop, conjure your warlike nature and type as if the words you are writing are weapons. When you are exercising and approaching muscular failure, call upon your internal warlord. If you cannot channel aggression with something as simple and silly as typing an essay or training the body, you will not be able to channel it at all. Then that extreme energy will force an outlet in some unproductive endeavor like promiscuity or drugs.

Practice controlling and directing your internal energies on small tasks, and you can then easily apply it to large tasks.

References:

Mike. “4 Cool Statistics About Abstinence in the USA.” Waitingtillmarriage.org, 30 Nov. 2012.

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