In a discussion about social issues, a rather passionate lass casually threw out a line about how much power I have, as a man.

I had other points to make, so I didn’t ask her what she meant.

You’ve probably heard about this idea too. The patriarchy. The idea that men, being men, have power and privilege over other classes.

That must be true, since they say it so often.

But… what sort of power, exactly?

“Most banking CEOs are men!” Yeah, but most men aren’t banking CEOs. The funny thing about senators and CEOs is they look out for their own interests. Having a bro in power doesn’t help the little guy.

Let’s put it this way: in feudal monarchies, the ruler is usually a king. How does that help the peasant who has to rake the dirt in between fighting the king’s wars?

So, really, what power does a man have? Compare him to, say, a black trans woman who works for Big Tech.

(There’s a cliché about trans women gravitating to Silicon Valley. Between the radical Californian politics and the low-T lifestyles of many tech workers, it’s cliché that makes sense.)

So… does the man have more economic power? Obviously not – working in Big Tech tends to pay very well. No one has hired me, promoted me or given me a scholarship for being a man. The opposite, though, happens every day.

What about political power? They each get one vote. Most politicians will pander to a black and trans person, while it’s rare to find one who’ll even pay lip service to men’s issues.

Cultural power? Movies, books, TV, games – they overwhelmingly pander to racial and trans ideologies, even when their audience is overwhelmingly men.

Physical power? Sure, if the trans woman is on hormones or has had the snip. But this is the least relevant power in civilised society.

Legal power? There are zero laws that favour men and quite a few that disfavour them. Then as for how they’re enforced, just look into the statistics. Men receive much harsher penalties for the same crime. That’s not even mentioning the shambles that is family court where, again, the statistics will break your heart.

So… what does the patriarchy actually do for me as a man?

I won’t pretend there aren’t advantages to being a man. Feminists don’t know what those advantages are – they’ll usually say something about being able to walk home alone at night (men are more likely to be the victims of violence) or how society is designed for us (except economically, politically, culturally or legally).

The patriarchy hasn’t existed as a relevant force for decades. If there’s a group of elites who happen to be mainly men, just remember – they keep 99.999% of men down too.

But what does this mean as a man?

What should you do to regain some economic or cultural power?

Nothing.

Don’t chase power – like money and happiness, it comes as a side effect of doing good work. If you chase it for its own sake… well, you’ve read a story before. You know how that will go.

But here’s some real advice for you.

Because there’s one major advantage you have as a man – one society has tried to strip from you but hasn’t quite succeeded:

Your yearning for glory.

That’s a tremendous asset. Learn to use it – and beware anyone promising you glory if you follow them.

… Why are you looking at me like that?

I’m not promising you glory if you follow me.

I’m giving you the recipe to glory. Do with it what you wish:

https://christianhypnotism.com/glory/

In late 2019, people – generally – were so optimistic.

“2020 will be my year!”

That really did feel like it was going to be a fresh start. 2020 is a nice, round number, the perfect year to begin something new.

The year was going to be our year.

It wasn’t. 2020 was a year of imprisonment, gaslighting and psychological weaponry. It was a nothing year, where people deferred their plans. And hobbies. And physical and mental health. Finances. Businesses. Families.

Most of us didn’t handle the lockdowns with grace, wisdom and strength. I count myself among that – I was caught flatfooted and ill equipped.

I bring this up because I get the same vibes now.

“2024 will be my year!”

That’s a round number too. It also offers a clean slate – far enough from the lockdowns that they’re a bitter memory.

But there are so many ways 2024 could turn against us. Keeping in mind how out of nowhere the lockdowns were – back then, we didn’t have wars, increasingly tyrannical governments and a disintegrating economy.

Back then, the governments didn’t know how readily folks would fall into line.

Now, I’m not saying this to burst any bubbles. No matter what happens, positive or not, optimism helps. Optimism is a virtue – figuring out how to authentically feel it is practically your duty.

But also prepare yourself. Don’t assume credit will flow, the internet will stay on, you’ll retain your freedom and folks will remain civil. No one saw the lockdowns coming. Anything could happen.

Build for the future and make it glorious. Enrich your mind and soul, strengthen your body, and get to work on your legacy.

Just build all that on the most solid foundations you can. Prepare for a shock to the system – it could come at any time.

Part of learning to weather the good times and the bad?

Mastering the skills and overcoming the weaknesses like so:

https://christianhypnotism.com/glory/

Back in one of my old jobs, working in an open office, I sneezed.

(This story gets more interesting.)

A colleague of mine found that hilarious. “Wow, what a dainty sneeze, William!”

I’m glad they found it amusing. It couldn’t have been have as fun as their reaction.

Before we continue, what can you tell me about this colleague? Are they a man or a woman?

You should be able to answer that with reasonable confidence. Not certainty – especially not in this era of masculine women and feminine men – but you should still be able to guess.

If you thought they were a man because men are thugs and bullies, always looking to tear each other down… haha, somebody’s been watching too many cartoons with unsubtle messages.

Of course this colleague was a woman. When men go after each other, we target things that matter. Teasing my sneezing is exactly the sort of random manure a woman would do.

Anyway, I brushed off this dagger aimed at my heart for three reasons:

One, I can control the volume of my sneezes. I take it this isn’t a thing everyone can do. At the office, my sneezes are restrained. At home, I let them tear.

Two – and I wished I’d learned this earlier – sometimes women have legitimate concerns. But, men, when a woman comes to you with a complaint or criticism that makes you scratch your head, remember it’s probably a test or part of some game. It means she likes you.

Three… it’s a sneeze. This isn’t an episode of Community – I’m sure I can live with this.

Anyway, I’m telling you a story about a time I sneezed because there’s a lesson in this.

When you understand the feminine, then everything becomes easier.

Yeah, obviously it helps you understand women. It teaches you when to listen to them and when to ignore them.

But it’s not just women who are feminine. So much of life is.

Consider a soldier. Brave, strong, heroic, loyal, focused on specific goals, pushing past their limits – a soldier is incredibly masculine.

But war is different. War is chaotic, unpredictable, all-devouring, dark, strangely beautiful and impossible to fully understand.

War is feminine.

Not all femininity is soft and nurturing. It can be hard and destructive too.

I say this because many men yearn for glory. They dream of fighting – usually metaphorically – to save civilisation.

So they look for a fight they can join.

And that’s a masculine virtue. “There’s a problem, now how do I fix it?” could be the motto of men. It’s great, too, because we’ll never save civilisation without winning many battles in her name.

But sometimes you need to step back.

Sometimes, instead of searching for a battle, you need to stare into the face of the war.

Either way, you’ll do better by understanding how the Enemy of Civilisation fights.

And you can do that by reading and applying the lessons here:

https://christianhypnotism.com/glory/

A submissive (that is, female) mentality craves strong boundaries. They like to snuggle up against them, feeling how resolute and unyielding they are.

Submissive folks feel the most comfortable in a strong, firm embrace.

Boundaries serve a different role for men. Shattering constraints fuels the warrior within. Getting promoted, setting a new personal best, earning more money, drinking less alcohol – these are all examples of you coming up against a boundary and shattering it.

You have to pick your battles, of course. No man can fight all the time. Some constraints, you’re better off if you accept them and focus on the ones that matter.

And that’s why video games can be so insidious.

Don’t mistake me – games are great. They serve a unique role in our culture. Even non-interactive art can teach, inspire and unite you. Games can do that and so much more.

But beware:

They put unreal obstacles in your way.

When you smash through them, it feels like progress. It’s not, though – not unless you’re a game designer, esports champion or professional streamer. If it’s just a hobby, the constraints aren’t real. They feel formidable but there’s nothing for you on the other side.

Enjoy your hobbies – life is bleak without them.

But do you find games more alluring than, say, hitting the gym? Do you need them to unwind or to feel good about yourself?

Do they get between you and what you know needs doing?

If so, this is why:

By feeding you virtual barriers and then letting you smash through them – literally or otherwise – you get a rush of satisfaction that you should get from your purpose.

It’s one of the ways an otherwise formidable man can lose his way.

It’s far from the only one.

To ward yourself against dangerous distractions, read and implement the battle plan I lay out here:

https://christianhypnotism.com/glory/

In a two-party system, third parties are so strange.

Our biggest third party in Australia is the Greens. I think, anyway. It’s been a while since I checked. They, like any party outside the two that win, come up with insane policies.

Ban all oil! Shut down the farms! Give all the country’s money to a homeless shelter!

Any of these policies would be an absolute disaster.  They get away with saying such nonsense because they’ll never be in a position of power. They’re untested by reality, so their policies are pure fantasy.

Nothing would change the Greens’ policies faster than them winning an election.

It’s funny how deranged people are when they have no power. They can afford to be weak, misguided, delusion and unbound with reality because it doesn’t matter. They can create the best policy or the worst – it won’t matter.

That’s why weak men are more dangerous than strong ones.

Having never tasted power, they haven’t learned to handle it. They’ve never learnt restraint, patience or perspective, since little they do matters.

So what, right? If they’re that weak, then they’re harmless.

Ah, but no man is always weak. There’ll be a time where he gets a sliver of power and gets drunk off the fumes.

That’s why weak men lash out so often. Words are the only power they know. Any male Karen will lose his manure at the waitress or the customer support technician because they’re the only ones who pretend to show him any respect.

It’s a good test of a man’s character. Put him in charge or engineer a situation where he’s dominant. He’ll reveal his inability to wield power immediately.

And the best way to avoid this happening to you is to taste power.

See how you react when you take action to disarm the Enemy.

After all, the Enemy wants you weak. Anything that thwarts it will make you strong.

What’s that?

You want a list of weak things to avoid?

This isn’t the usual list. I don’t talk about bad habits like TV or booze. No, this is much more fundamental – cracks in the foundations, not shoddy paintwork.

See what I mean here:

https://christianhypnotism.com/glory/

Failures of Sentience are when you forget that other people have lives, mindsets, priorities and perspectives different from your own.

That might sound ridiculous to you, but it’s common. It’s practically the rule, not the exception, on social media – especially with anything to do with the culture war.

People have good reasons for disagreeing with you, even when they’re wrong.

This is why fiction matters. It teaches you how to think as someone else for a while, to see the world through very different eyes than yours. You can disagree with someone, think their ideas are insane and corrosive, and swear to fight against their cause til your dying breath… and still understand how a smart, knowledgeable, compassionate person might come to believe that.

Fiction helps you do this.

You can listen to someone as unhinged as the Joker talk about blowing up Gotham and see where he’s coming from. You’d still die to thwart him, but you can still understand him.

Fiction does more than this, of course. It’s also an excellent vehicle for exploring ideas and teaching morals.

Even without practical benefits, culture deserves to exist on its own merits. It can be beautiful, which is enough.

I understand fiction. I study it, casually at least, teasing it apart and trying to understand it.

That means it occupies a place in my mind a lot.

It’s also a common target for the Enemy of Civilisation, which also means I think about it often.

The Enemy wants to corrupt fiction. It wants to replace the values it teaches with apathy, confusion and poor character. It wants to take what should be a comfort and use it to inflict pain.

I wonder if Rome, as it was collapsing, also made crappy remakes of classic plays, stripping out all the good bits and leaving a diseased, hollow and preachy shell.

Or maybe that’s just us.

The fight for fiction is a fight for the future. It matters that we get this right. We’ve already seen what happens when we don’t fight – we get bad stories teaching bad lessons, leaving a hollow experience for the viewer. Some folks like anything and some are too young to know any better – they have the worst deal. They’ll consume this content and enjoy it only because they don’t know what they should expect to get instead. If there were great shows and terrible ones, they’d gravitate towards the great ones. Instead, they settle for the terrible ones, confused why not everyone likes it too.

(Nuance check: obviously taste is subjective. You might like Star Wars, you might hate it. Neither is right or wrong. You might even like the sequel trilogy. But the sequels are objectively worse by any measure that matters.)

Anyway, that is what it is.

Choosing what to watch and read is a small but key part of the culture war.

It’s a small but key part of your wellbeing.

If you watch enriching things made by folks who don’t hate you, you’ll have an edge.

What can I say? Glory comes to those who join the fight against the Enemy of Civilisation.

But… what exactly does that mean? The Enemy of Civilisation isn’t a person. It’s not a horde of barbarians at the gate.

Using actual violence to fight the Enemy only serves the Enemy’s agenda.

So that’s not what do to.

What do you do?

There’s quite a few things you can begin, right now, to strip the Enemy of some of its power.

You can find a list at this growing article:

https://christianhypnotism.com/glory/

Few women will understand the male craving for oblivion.

It’s why we fantasise about dying in glorious battle for a noble cause. No, we’re not actually wanting to end things. It’s a craving, not a plan.

And this craving is why – in this society without glory or opportunities for many of us – we seek oblivion in smaller ways.

The escape of video games – a mindless distraction, complete with simulated deaths.

Numbing beer.

Even the final ecstatic release of intimacy comes with a beautiful moment of blankness.

Those are poor substitutes for actual glory.

But it’s wrong to think there aren’t worthy causes around, even in this modern and civilised era.

In fact, there’s more glory here than in an ancient battlefield. Here, most folks are oblivious to the threat, assuming that progress lasts forever and civilisation can be taken for granted.

They’re wrong.

There’s a fight for the very survival of civilisation. It’s not a fight against invading barbarians, but a psychological war inside our minds.

The Enemy of Civilisation wants to tear down all the great works around you.

And it wants to use you to do it, bloodying your hands as you reduce your world to rubble.

It’s evil, it’s relentless and it must be stopped.

How?

I talk about the first two steps in the plan to fight back here:

https://christianhypnotism.com/glory/