MGTOW Self Actualization
The Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW) movement has gained momentum in the West since the turn of the millennium for two principal reasons: The first of these and the main driver fueling the movement has been a steady degradation in the quality of life for men promulgated by the incessant demands of nth-wave feminism (whatever number it’s on these days); and second, the enabling technology of the internet has facilitated collaboration as has no other phenomenon in human history, granting men a forum to discover, share and ultimately celebrate the commonality of their escape from a culture that is dedicated to punishing all things masculine.
My own identification with the MGTOW community is coming up on twenty-eight years. Red pill rage that consumed me for the first decade dissipated a long time ago. By studiously avoiding marriage and long-term relationships leading to cohabitation, I’ve immunized myself against most of the excesses — excepting ruinous levels of taxation — of the feminist pandemic. For me, imbalances in law have become so egregious there is simply no plausible scenario — no woman so beautiful, intelligent or desirable — worth the significant downside risks imposed by the current social disorder and its execratory legal landscape. Some have argued that feminism has descended to its nadir, but I don’t see that. Its unholy alliance with the Marxist Regressive Left practically guarantees further decline into ideological extremism and authoritarianism. Even if the low point has been magically reached, the corruption of the West’s institutions by the Left will take decades to unwind — if it can be achieved peacefully at all. I would argue that extracting unearned entitlements from a voting majority to effect any real change is virtually impossible, except in conditions of societal collapse.
Many fellow MGTOW at all levels of their post-traumatic journey of discovery and enlightenment have become effective spokesmen and therapists for newly-minted red pill escapees in the process of reassembling their lives. Although admittedly still a recovering romantic that occasionally falls off the wagon, over these many years I’ve thankfully attained a measure of balance and equanimity, effectively a peace dividend fostering the potential to reveal a pathway to one’s personal actualization. What I and many other men have come to realize is that MGTOW’s ultimate prize is the enhanced freedom that accrues from a life pursuing one’s own interests, husbanding one’s own resources and making decisions for one’s own future. Although there’s no longer any such thing in this era of 24/7 surveillance as true freedom, it’s possible to come much closer to that ideal once the physical and psychological tethers binding one to degenerative societal expectations of male servitude have been severed.
This brings me to the question as to what constitutes self-actualization for MGTOW. Given that I successfully navigated the five stages of grief almost two decades ago, where has my journey taken me? From my perspective, the clearest exposition of this question was put forth several years ago by an Australian MGTOW philosopher named Colttaine (Australia seems to be rife with runaways from the plantation). He looked at the different ways men and women prioritize needs in relation to Abraham Maslow’s pyramidal hierarchy. The first four levels of the Maslow pyramid are categorized as deficiency needs (physiological, safety, love/belonging, esteem), and Colttaine makes a convincing case that these needs are manifested differently by men and women. I’ll include a link to his video at the end of this post, but I won’t repeat his entire analysis here, except to amplify his postulates regarding self-actualization.
When women have surmounted deficiency needs and are in self-actualization, they tend to create recursive closed-loop systems to augment the dominance of the sisterhood. Examples include VAWA (Violence Against Women Act), which ignores the gender symmetry of domestic violence; the willful dismissal of male historians, philosophers and intellectuals to foist a concept of patriarchy theory; the disemboweling of legitimate biological science to spin gender construct nonsense; and, founding of organizations such as Emily’s List — prioritizing women’s health care, “equal” pay, paid leave for monthly menstruation discomfort, pro-choice feticide, election of “progressive” politicians, and similar causes. It’s not that remarkable things aren’t achieved, it’s that these achievements only benefit their true agenda of female supremacy.
On both the Left and the Right, blue pill men carry water for this recursive process. White knights and manginas grant special recognition to women by enabling victimization tropes; traditional conservatives similarly elevate women to goddess pedestals because they’re ‘ladies’. These behaviors reinforce societal delusions regarding both the hypoagency of women and the hyperagency of men. If the reader hasn’t encountered these concepts, the simplest way to explain them is in reference to the exploits of 1930s bank robbers Bonnie and Clyde. Although the real-life Bonnie was a violent psychopath, her hypoagency exonerates her from any responsibility for their joint actions. Conversely, Clyde, with hyperagency, bears her blame as well as his own.
When men achieve self-actualization, they are merely said to have agency. What results among exceptional individuals includes scientific discovery (thermodynamics, the calculus, quantum physics, relativity); exploration (land, sea, undersea, air, space); technology (the internal combustion engine, the electrical grid, computers, the internet, smart phones); and countless other achievements that tend to benefit all of humankind. I suspect altruism has little if anything to do with their motivation. There’s simply a joy of creation pursued for its own sense of accomplishment. If success follows, wonderful. Many men may toil for a lifetime, achieving great things, but are only recognized posthumously, if at all. Their sense of satisfaction during their productive years is nevertheless undiminished.
Of course there are women among this exalted community, whether in science, medicine, the arts or in any other endeavor. As the saying goes however, it’s the exception that proves the rule.
It follows that only a few men who transcend deficiency needs to become self actualized will ascend to greatness, but this is beside the point for those that simply wish to be left alone to pursue whatever passions motivate them. They may aspire to become an accomplished fly fisherman, or to rebuild a classic automobile. These are all valid pursuits if they facilitate true agency. At the end of the day, it’s the freedom to pursue these dreams that is truly rewarding. MGTOW merely have to step off the vitality-sucking hamster wheel of societal expectations to experience the exhilaration inherent in a universe of opportunity that has always existed in plain sight.
