I watched X-Men: First Class recently. Cool movie, my friends and I all agree.

But the intended moral takeaway is that Professor Xavier (hippie peace-creep who thinks mutants and humans can live together in harmony forever and ever) is the good guy, and Magneto (cold, concentration-camp scarred realist who believes humans will exterminate mutants if given half a chance) is bad. But is the audience’s conclusion based on anything deeper than the observation that Xavier seems like a good dude, while Magneto scowls a lot?

Magneto acts under the assumption that Humans and Mutants are destined to conflict. Xavier, that we can all live together as one happy family. So based on the feel-goodness of his motivations, we side with Xavier.

But Magneto and Xavier’s disagreement is not based on what mutants and humans should do. It is a question of how humans actually will react to the presence of mutants in their world. Since the world provides many examples of  humans’ inability to live in harmony with those who are different and powerful, my position on the Xavier/Magneto debate is clear: The latter is a clear-headed advocate for mutant survival through independence and self-sufficiency, while the former is a coddled, doe-eyed optimist, unable to see the world for the series of cynical conflicts it is. The X-Men sequels actually end up clearly supporting Magneto’s pessimism – but still, how many in the general audience would even consider siding with Magneto? Very few.

Many years ago, my favourite cartoon was Beast Wars. Basically, the characters were animal-based transformers, and it was all kinds of awesome. I’m getting nerd chills just thinking about it.

But almost every episode followed a similar plotline: The Predacons (bad guys) would devise some evil scheme to kill all the Maximals (good guys). Every time, their plan would be foiled at the last minute by the heroic efforts of the Maximals, who would follow up by letting the Predacons retreat to their base and start planning for next week’s attack. On several occasions, the good guys were presented with opportunities to destroy their enemies’ base. Each time they refused. A quote I still remember from the Maximal leader, which prompted a WTF even from my childhood self: “Our goal is to defeat the Predacons, not annihilate them.” Never mind that this is recipe for never-ending war, at best, since the Predacons have clearly and repeatedly stated that their goal is the complete destruction of the Maximals.

Another random memory: In all of the commercials for action figures that shot projectiles, the ad would show one action figure shooting a pile of blocks that would then collapse on another action figure. Apparently an actual direct hit would have been too much for our young minds.

Moving right along, let’s talk about Batman.

At a glance, Bruce Wayne seems like the ultimate reactionary superhero. Fed up with the inability of Gotham’s government to reign in crime, he becomes a vigilante and brings justice and order to the decaying city.

And yet, in Batman Begins, he can’t bring himself to demonstrate his commitment and loyalty to Ninja Skull and Bones by killing a criminal. His response when asked to do so is, “I’m no executioner.”

Why Bruce? Is it a union thing? Justice requires men who catch criminals, and men who fine, jail, and kill them. If you care so much about fighting crime, why are you only willing to do half the job?

Later on, Commissioner Gordon says to Batman that if the police get semi-automatics, the mafia will get automatics, if they get body armor, they will buy armor-piercing rounds. His logic implies that the Gotham police force should arm itself with whiffle bats, so that it can only face criminals with same. A wittier Batman might have responded by pointing to the desolate slums of Gotham, and asking, “So Commish – how’s that philosophy workin’ out for ya?”

So even a badass like Batman, whose raison d’être is fundamentally right-wing, must be packaged in pacifistic bromides before he’s deemed fit for public consumption. And still, we’re supposed to see Batman as a good, but flawed figure – a decent man, driven by the death of his parents to use extreme means to achieve noble ends. The idea that noble ends sometimes require dirty hands has left the building.

Next up: Star Wars.

I have little to add to this classic article on The Case For The Empire.

“In Episode IV, after Grand Moff Tarkin announces that the Imperial Senate has been abolished, he’s asked how the Emperor can possibly hope to keep control of the galaxy. “The regional governors now have direct control over territories,” he says. “Fear will keep the local systems in line.”

So under Imperial rule, a large group of regional potentates, each with access to a sizable army and star destroyers, runs local affairs. These governors owe their fealty to the Emperor. And once the Emperor is dead, the galaxy will be plunged into chaos.

In all of the time we spend observing the Rebel Alliance, we never hear of their governing strategy or their plans for a post-Imperial universe. All we see are plots and fighting. Their victory over the Empire doesn’t liberate the galaxy–it turns the galaxy into Somalia writ large: dominated by local warlords who are answerable to no one.

Which makes the rebels–Lucas’s heroes–an unimpressive crew of anarchic royals who wreck the galaxy so that Princess Leia can have her tiara back.

I’ll take the Empire.”

If you read the entire piece, you’ll see it really is an open and shut case. The rebels are a bunch of dickheads. But in a contest between a scrappy bunch of rag-tag misfits who dress in white, vs. an effective, peace-seeking, but stern empire clothed in black – viewers cheer for the rebels every time. Filmmakers know how to trigger our “good guy” and “bad guy” switches, and they do it so effectively that several generations of Star Wars audiences have spent their lives generally agreeing that the rebels are in the right, and the Empire is in the wrong.

*

I could go on with a few more examples. But I’ll leave the rest to the live studio audience. Readers, two questions:

1) Who are some of your other favourite reactionary pop culture anti-heroes?

2) Which supposedly good characters are we supposed to empathize with, but are actually pieces of shit?

Boss commented on my post about the value of close friendships (aww) to say this:

“I haven’t finished reading the article yet, but damn..what an article,…thanks a lot”

I appreciate the kind words. But honestly dude, it’s a 500-word article. Is your attention span really not equipped to deal with two consecutive minutes of reading? What is it with you kids these days? Read a book why don’t ya.

And yes, I realize that by writing such a short post, I’m not part of the solution.

Resistance to learning game usually comes from men who are somewhat, but not superlatively successful with women.”I don’t need Game! I have a girlfriend!/I get laid!/I’m married!”

Well, OK. But beyond a small circle of banana republic dictators, professional athletes, and a few absolute masters of pick-up, no man is as successful with women as he wants to be. I’m certainly not. Ask yourself: If you had the power to instantly seduce and have sex with any woman you ever saw, would your life be any different? If so, you have work to do. And until you do it, focusing on anything else will be impossible:

“This is where Game comes in. Without Game, the desperate pursuit of sex takes up 90% of the average man’s day. 10% he might spend feeding his body – one hour of his workday would pay for the food he needs and another for the shelter (that is, a place to sleep – not a place to show off as a status symbol in the quest for sex). The rest of the day he is working for sex. Buying his big house and car, paying off the mortgage, getting a new suit – doing these things, he is paying for sex. Watching TV at home, he is trying to calm his restless instincts that are making him feel bad about not having sex – “look!”, he unwittingly tells his instincts, “hot women on TV! I’m looking at hot women, I must be about to get laid! Look, sports! It’s a status competition! I must be about to achieve status and get laid! Look, a video game! I must be about to kill a fearsome enemy and complete a quest that will get me sex!” His instincts believe these illusions and tone down the torment just a little bit, allowing him to feel a tiny measure of relaxation before the next day’s toil.

With Game comes freedom, but it comes in degrees. It’s not going to be as easy as microwaving a pizza, but it’s going to get a lot easier than it has been so far. With a moderate grasp of Game, the man might still be doing the same things, but getting results. He might still spend all day chasing satisfaction for those reproductive instincts, but he would be getting it. He would feel good about it. The work would not be fruitless. He might be happy with this life – he’s getting the sex he wants, and even if he’s working all day for it, what better things are there to do with his day than that? He probably can’t think of any. This life would be the dream of at least 90% of men.

…

The reason I place such great value on Game is that it is one of the most important – if not the single most important life-improvement pursuit a man can undertake. Aware of it or not, practically all men’s lives are completely ruled by their reproductive instincts, and Game is the key to freedom from that prison. Or rather, you are still in prison, but the prison is now such a nice place that you never feel desperate enough to claw at the walls. Your instincts are still what they are, but now they are satisfied and do not have the power to make you unhappy. They cannot make you suffer by forcing you to work for status symbols, put up with bitchy girlfriends, feel restless and unsatisfied without a sexual outlet, etc.. The power of the instincts is in the suffering they cause when not satisfied – when you can give your instincts exactly what they want without needing to compromise any part of your life, they lose their power over you.

This is why Game is so crucially important. As long as you spend your life working as a slave to your instincts, you will not be happy. If you can’t remove the instincts, you can at least remove the slavery. Make satisfying the instincts easy and fun, and your slavery turns into a joyride, a vacation. Freedom. Then, you can work on the whatever else in your life needs improving. Then, you can work on enlightenment. Then, you can do whatever you want… but first, you need to fill the gaping maws of those desperately hungry instincts that make your life the hell that people call ‘normal’ .”

If  you aren’t getting everything you want from your relationships with the women in your life, every layer of your mind will be singularly focused on righting that wrong. This isn’t to say you’ll do nothing but surf Match.com by day and hit the club seven nights a week. Throughout history, men have created masterpieces, advanced technology, built and ruined empires with energy fueled by their subconscious hind brain desire to put their penises inside vaginas and move them around until they make a mess. The world we live in is little more than the extended phenotype of our horny ancestors.

So what would you do, if you could get laid at will, were confident that no one could take that away from you, and had thus (partially, at least) freed yourself from the biological imperative to create things to impress girls?

For the first time in your life, you’d be able to ask yourself: What do I really want to create? For myself? How do I want to spend my time on this planet, since I no longer have anyone to impress? Whatever you did from that point on, it would be yours. If you want to change the world, start getting laid first. Otherwise you’ll always be fighting against the part of your brain screaming “Fuck this! Let’s get some PUSSSAAYYY.”

As a child, you never really pick your friends. Fate picks them for you based on where you live, what school you go to, and whether or not you can throw a football. For most, “childhood” extends into college and beyond.

One of the perks of adulthood is that you get to choose your friends. Since who you spend time with is ultimately one of the core determinants of the person you become, it’s an important perk to take advantage of.

Do you want to spend the rest of your life in the same town, working for the same company? You can do it. Start a bowling team with high school buddies who won’t torment you with stressful challenges to dream bigger.

Do you want to slavishly climb the corporate ladder? Network with others on the same track as you, whether they’re at your level, a little ahead, or a little behind. It’s probably a better investment of your time than anything you do at your desk.

But once you have goals and a life plan that are unconventional, finding a like-minded peer group is more difficult. If you want to play in the NHL, compose a platinum album, or write a best-seller, you’ll have to say “Hi, I’m ____” to a lot of people before you meet someone else who thinks like you, and who has the ability and work ethic to follow through. Judged by their actions rather than their thoughts and words, the vast majority of people are average and will remain so for their entire lives.

I want friends who teach, inspire and encourage me. I also want friends who look for the same from me. In some friendships, one person – a mentor -  does significantly more of the teaching than the other – a protege. Most of what I know in life, I’ve learned from watching people more successful than I am. And here’s an open secret: Successful people trip over themselves to help out a rookie with potential.

So does this mean I’m trying to find more ambitious, more inspiring replacements for my current friends? Not at all.

When I meet a fun, interesting person who’s starting a business similar to (but not competing against) my own and writing a blog about it, I want to have lunch with him. I want to share ideas, laugh at each other’s missteps, and subconsciously convince ourselves that what we’re doing is not weird.

But will I call him when I come home from work and my wife has changed the locks and filed a restraining order? When I’m out of money and need a meal and a place to stay?* Probably not.

There are some things in life that you need real friends for. Friends that fate made for you in your childhood, and have stuck around since. It’s not impossible for adult friendships to take on the closeness and permanency that characterizes decades-old childhood friendships. But it’s tough.

Fortunately, we all have a lot of childhood friends. High school, undergrad, and our first grown-up jobs: Each brings a fresh set of 10+ friends. As you mature, you’ll naturally gravitate and grow closer to the ones you identify with.Most of the time, anyways. If you have four best friends working alongside you to conquer the world, having a fifth who just wants to sell TVs and smoke weed won’t kill you, especially if he’s the only one who would help you bury a body some day. At least, he’ll get you a deal on a flatscreen.

My circle of friends has some remarkable people, and many of them are doing various sorts of weird, awesome things with their lives. There’s a budding hip-hop star. A few globetrotters. A pirate.  A few trying to escape the 9-5 grind and pre-set life of complacency and routines. There are even some who are fully embracing the conventional life path of career and family, and believe it or not, I have the utmost respect for them.

The important thing is that each adds something of value.

What are your friends adding to your life? Do they suck? Get new ones. Are they great, but stagnant? Hold onto them, but find a new peer group to inspire you.

Lucky bastard that I am, I’ve spent the past decade watching the friends I made as a child – at school, camp, and college -  grow into some incredible people. If you’re similarly blessed, good for you. If not, it’s probably one of the biggest factors holding you back in life. Fix it.

*Neither of these is realistic since I will  never cohabitate let alone get married, and welfare seems to be generous enough for cigarettes, booze and cable TV. But you get the idea.

You see, I’m not your garden-variety thoughtless dickhead. My goal in offering unsolicited dating advice to the internet’s womenfolk is not (just) the amusement of myself and my readers. I harass the blind, so that they might see.

Round One of AAAH pointed out the self-defeating nature of Date Me DC‘s angry, picky, cynical approach to sex and dating. Please read the post, as it’s a Freedom Twenty-Five classic, but the point was that the big three-oh-approaching Date Me DC author is doing herself no favours by endlessly getting her ticket punched on the big-city meat market merry-go-round, while her salad years slip away.

Soon after that post, she appeared to have suffered from a month of writer’s block. Date Me DC went quiet. I concluded that she was in speechless awe of me, and had bought cats to throw birthday parties for. But  few days ago, this popped up in my RSS feed:

“It finally happened.

One man after another came into my life and ripped out a piece of me. And in their wake, I am irreparably damaged. Bruised, bleeding – the emotional equivalent of a once-formidable boxer knocked nearly unconscious and staring bleary eyed up at the ceiling from the center of the ring.

I broke.

…

David got first choice. So I will never understand the amount of cold calculation it took for David to look me, a woman he once loved, directly in the eyes as he piled all of my belongings in the middle of our living room floor, kept $1,000 of my money as collateral and told me he wouldn’t give it back until I got out.

…

Mark took the next piece.

He was so debonair, with his long hair brushing the tips of his eyelashes. I’d never laughed harder on a date. He was the first man for whom I’d truly felt the rush of infatuation since I’d met and began dating David. And he owned his own real estate company – I can’t deny that I was beyond impressed with his credentials.

Two dates with him and my imagination exploded. I started mentally planning trips to Croatia, where he was born, and fantasizing about steamy nights spent in his fabulous Logan Circle loft.

Mark was only the fifth man I’d gone on a date with. He was also the one to teach me “He is not different; you are not special.”

We slept together and I never heard from him again.

…

Then Jack tore out another chunk.

I got one final text: “I’m sorry. Apparently I have my own emotional issues I need to work out.”

I didn’t have it in me to explain to my family why I couldn’t stop crying on Christmas Day 2009.

….

I didn’t think I’d meet Chris.

but I don’t even know how to describe what he meant to me.

Save to say that I loved him.

And it fucking kills me to lose him because I know I meant something to him, too. One night he described to me the unimaginable horrors of his childhood. Opening up to me like that shook him. I could see it. We both felt it.

But he’s even more skilled at compartmentalizing than David. After that night, he closed it down, tucked it away – and he was never quite the same with me.

I can’t begin to articulate how that makes me feel. I can’t find the words.

And worse, now I can’t find any words that fulfill me like they used to. Every day without him is a day that the sun doesn’t shine for me. That food tastes like sawdust. That I fail to see a reason why I should even bother getting out of bed. That I daydream about sinking into the Potomac, just sinking, looking up at the sunlight reflecting on the surface and not even trying to swim.

Chris violently, passionately ripped out the last bit of me.

Blogger Sassy Marmalade came to my apartment a few weeks ago and said something that totally stuck with me: “The song is wrong – the first cut is not the deepest. They build on each other.”

Mark built on David, Jack built on that, John added more and Chris finished the job.

I’m broken.

They broke me.”

…

The thing is, he knows everything. He came into my life right at the point I was clearly hitting rock bottom. I know he can see just how damaged I am, and he doesn’t shy away. He’s kind, and compassionate, and the best listener I have ever known (women in my life included).

I can’t even describe how much he means to me at this point.

He’s a good man.

He’s my life raft.”

So there you have it folks. Assholes may not be fun to listen to, but we can offer you better advice than the suck-up yes-men who cravenly reaffirm your crappy life choices as a means of seeking your approval. Katie finished off her mini-series yesterday, with the announcement that she’s going on blogging hiatus:

“After 56 first dates, 214 blog posts, and countless awkward moments, drunken nights, humiliations and heartbreaks, I have a boyfriend.

…

This used to be the place I could let it all hang out. Lately, it feels more like my noose. I’ve barely even wanted to write in weeks.

That said, I’ve spent so much of the last 18 months of my life seeking out dates, going on dates, thinking about dates, writing about dates, that I’m kind of at a loss for what other topic I could even cover.

…

So if you’ve enjoyed this blog in any way, this may not be “goodbye” — just “see you later.”

From these stats, Caplan and Tabarrok find reason to wallow in optimism. Things aren’t so bad, you see. 1950-1990 is a blip! A blip I say!

But here’s my pessimist Tory rebuttal. First, some quibbles with the data.

Using homicides per 100K distorts the actual effectiveness of our government at controlling crime, because it ignores the contribution made by demographics. How would this graph look if we scaled it to homicides per 100k males age 18-25? Quite a bit flatter, I imagine. Also, as Tabarrok generously offers, advances in medical technology have resulted in progressively more assaults and fewer homicides. Take these two factors into account, and I think you’ll see a trend of fairly consistent levels of the American government’s success at stifling criminality.

More importantly, making a straight apples-to-apples comparison of 17th-19th and 21st century homicide rates is setting the bar too low. Given the amount of technological and economic progress over the past 200 years, we should fully expected violent crime to have dropped to near-zero level.

The United States of centuries past was a vast frontierland, much of which was beyond the limes of formal civilization. It was full of ambitious, risk-loving young men itching to conquer a world as yet undiscovered by law and order. Politics was characterized by mob violence in the major cities. We were, at different times, leading up to and recovering from a brutal civil war. Today, we have technology, wealth and peace that our ancestors could barely dream of. The United States before the 20th century was a violent place, true. But imagine traveling back in time, telling our great-great-grandfathers about the resources our modern criminal justice system has available to it, and then bragging to them that crime has (perhaps) moderately declined.

Now imagine telling them and that large areas of every major city are still extremely dangerous to civilized people, that murderers frequently walk free after <10 years in prison, that our prisons release convicted felons en masse because of overcrowding. Imagine telling them that no one can leave their car or bike unlocked, women can’t jog through urban parks at night, and that our cities are covered in unsightly graffiti. I think Gramps would conclude that our government has completely abandoned its core sovereign duty to keep its citizens safe from internal disorder.

The optimism of Caplan, Tabarrok and others like them comes from their accurate observation that technology and economic growth have made the lives of average Americans (and most others) safer, easier, and more comfortable. I readily concede that the poor of the 21st century have the edge over the middle classes of the 19th in material wealth, life expectancy, access to culture and education, and in many other respects. But though we revel in bread, circuses and iPads, we have also experienced a monotonic decline in the quality of our government. Caplan and Tabarrok should embrace this, rather than gloss over the abject failure of the US government’s criminal justice policy by pointing out that we compare slightly favorably to the wild west.

We recently sparred on the topic of monogamy and traditional sexual mores. Originally we were trading emails about the nature of The First World War. I pointed him towards Hoppe, and he took issue with the following claim by HHH:

“In the U.S., less than a century of full-blown democracy has resulted in steadily increasing moral degeneration, family and social disintegration, and cultural decay in the form of continually rising rates of divorce, illegitimacy, abortion, and crime.”

Specifically, he asked me:

“Why is our current society morally degenerative? Do you believe it is more moral to have a wife and children from the age of 22 and stay in the relationship for good or ill till you are dead? If so, why is that more moral than the life we live now? Am I immoral for not following the churches teachings regarding marriage and life? If so, from your own non-religious perspective, why?  In his view are you yourself a moral person?”

Our basic disagreement is not over what happened in the 20th century: Extra-marital sex, divorce, and promiscuity all became more accepted, and thus common. Duh. But my friend – and many like him, as his views are as mainstream as they come – thinks that these developments are positive. There are downsides of course, but overall, the feminist/sexual liberation movement has been a force for good in the 20th century western world.

I believe the opposite. The breakdown of traditional marriage has been catastrophic; easy divorce has wreaked havoc on millions of families; the ubiquity of hookup culture has created a generation that will struggle to create the tight familial bonds that came easily and naturally to previous generations. My friend asks if I think it’s better for people to get married at 22 and stay in that relationship until they’re dead. My answer is yes. The benefits of the sexual revolution are so clearly outweighed by the costs, I can’t see it as anything but a disaster. Even if not for me, personally.

Which brings us to my friend’s next question:

“In his view are you yourself a moral person?”

He refers to my proclivity towards manwhorishness. Though I advocate (anonymously, and in the private consul of close friends) for a return to traditional sexual mores, the life I lead is not a shining example of those principles in action. I have failed to be the change I want to see in the world. In conversations with girls I want to bang,  I am a non-judgmental, grrl-power, sex-positive feminist, wantonly celebrating the depravity and freedom of the 21st century sexual marketplace. Free love, man.

So in a hypothetical conversation with Hoppe – or any of the other traditionalists I respect, such as Dalrock, Athol, and Grerp-  how would I justify being a part of the problem, and partaking in the pleasures of a system that I agree is harmful to our society and those within it?

Maybe I’m just rationalizing my good fortune – truly, a hamster lives in each of us  – but I think that each young man’s choice to eschew society’s diktat to marry and provide for unworthy women will accelerate the implosion of the current sexual marketplace. The status quo can only persist for as long as men are wiling to indulge the women that previous generations of men would have considered undateable. The “moral” men who are wifing up shrill, obese, used-up thirty year olds are just creating incentives that ensure more will follow in their lumbering footsteps.

Yes, part of me thinks that chasing slooots is a noble act of great political significance. Fuck off all right? It helps me sleep.

Another auto-interpretation of the contrast between my beliefs and actions is that my soul is really, truly, congruently that of a monogamous man interested in lifelong marriage – I just don’t know it yet because I haven’t met a woman worth the investment. Get married for life? Sure. Show me a woman my 25-year old Grandfather would have been proud to marry, and maybe I’ll feel the same way. Alternatively, time-warp the young old man into 2011 and show him a world of party-girl 20-somethings just looking to get laid and hang out, and 30-something diamond-hunters with sagging muffin tops and triple-digit partner counts, and I think I could quickly persuade him of the wisdom of my ways.

Anyways.  To get back to the original point of this post, which I had to scroll up and check just now, it is completely logical for young men to bemoan the sorry state of marriage and traditional families, while doing their turgid best to fuck everything that walks.

Young men interested in marriage today have two choices. They can wait, and hope, for new laws and new women. Or, in a noble act of self-sacrificial contrition, they can cast ourselves on the funeral pyre of marriage, and put their wealth and freedom at the tender mercy of one 21st-century woman’s flighty whims. Me, I choose to wait. And even though I think lifelong monogamy is optimal from a societal perspective blah blah blah, I’m waiting for inspiration before I settle down.

How long will I wait? Ball’s in your court ladies. As long as sex is cheap and easy, and marriage is anything but, the dick and the door are all I’m willing to offer.

The goal of the New Workout Plan is to achieve maximum health – defined as energy, athleticism, and hawtness – with as little investment possible. Without further ado, I present:

Freedom Twenty-Five’s Get Right For The Summer Workout Tape.

Diet: Primal/Paleolithic all the way:

- Fresh meat, nuts, berries and vegetables

- Lots of whole egg

- Some beans and potatoes

- Butter in everything, some cream and high-fat milk.

- Dark chocolate, occasional rye bread

Exercise: Short, heavy resistance workouts, and lots of play

Workout #1: Pull-ups, Bench Press, Shoulder Press. 5X superset.

Workout #2: Deadlifts, jump squats, lunges. 5X superset.

One per week of: Hockey, Volleyball, Ultimate frisbee. 1-3 long hikes in my Vibrams.

Miscellaneous

- One 24-hour fast per week

- 2-5 quick yoga practices per week and foam rolling (to increase flexibility and prevent/heal injuries)

- Transitioning into a standing workstation

- Increased Fish oil supplementation from 2 to 10 capsules per day

* * *

Recently, I had a conversation with a good friend, a professional strength coach. I told him about my diet and exercise routine (surprisingly, he and his coaching team are 100% down with the paleo/primal lifestyle. Hope for the world! But when I asked him what percentage of his peers are similarly enlightened, he guessed 1-5%. ) I asked him what changes I would need to make to make the final step – i.e. go from 15% t0 10% body fat, go from being “pretty big” to “ripped to shreds,” start putting up serious weight in my lifts – basically to get where he is.

After a conversation about my lifestyle and habits, here was his advice:

- Alcohol, and especially beer are the main cause of my plateau. Cut them out, or at least drastically cut back.

- Increase fish oil supplementation to ridiculous amounts. 10+ capsules per day, especially if I’ve eaten non-organic meat

- Increase my gym time to incorporate more rest between sets. Take the above two-day split, stop super-setting, and add a minute of rest between each set.

- Maintain a more regular sleep schedule. Try to get to bed early, even on weekends.

- Eliminate cheat meals

This, he assures me, will push me from a guy who looks and feels pretty good, into a superhuman. And I believe him. I pointed out that as he was giving me this advice, we were hammering back keg beer. He replied, “Yeah, but this is literally the only time I’ve partied like this in the past three months. Sometimes you gotta make sacrifices. “

Thinking about our conversation the next day, I thought that I wanted to make those sacrifices. I decided to give up drinking for a month. I decided to eliminate cheat meals, and work out in the evenings so I didn’t have to hurry back to work.

But over the next few days , I had to confront the practical implications of my unchecked ambition:

- I have two bachelor parties coming up in June. Am I really going to not drink at them?

- Lounging in a post-coital embrace, about to watch Blue Valentine with my sort-of girlfriend, she asked me if I wanted her to go make a bowl of berries, almonds, dark chocolate, and ice cream to snack on. Was it really worth saying no, so that my six-pack becomes an eight?

- Working out slowly and methodically is boring as shit. Am I really going to spend beautiful summer nights in the sweaty, clanking, fluorescent-lit dungeons that are modern urban fitness centers?

Last Saturday night – sitting on a deck watching the sun rise with two of my best friends, finishing off the cigars and bottle of gin that we’d been working on since getting back from the bar at 3am – I realized the answer was no.

A man’s mid-twenties are his years to drink, smoke, eat, fuck and grind as much as he wants. If you incorporate healthy habits in most of your life, youth and hunger will give you the energy to power through the rest. Probably one day, I’ll get tired of cigar and gin nights that stretch into mid-morning. But until that day, the Freedom Twenty-Five Workout Plan will be based on identifying the 20% of sacrifices that generate 80% of the positive outcomes. The rest, I’ll happily leave on the table.

1) It’s the season of clear lakes, beach volleyball, patios, barbecues, and ultimate.

2) Cottages and a bachelor party have taken me out of town every weekend since April.

3) My soulless nine-to-five  has been uncharacteristically fast-paced and soulful lately.

But my day planner has suffered worse than the above, and I’ve still managed to steal the occasional half-hour to blog. So what’s up?

Last month, I parted ways with my WordPress.com blog, and created the one you’re reading now.

When I made that change, I also made a subconscious shift in my approach to writing. Go read my last post. Doesn’t it sound like something  Seth Godin or Tim Ferriss would write? The tone is reminiscent of a wise tribal elder, generously bestowing wisdom on his lessers. There’s nothing wrong with that, if you can pull it off. But unless you’ve actually done what you’re trying to teach, you probably can’t. For example, Seth and Tim are both wildly successful authors and entrepreneurs. If they want to make the implicit assumption that they know more than me about writing and creating businesses, I welcome it.

But so far, I’m not a wildly successful anything. This is not me being humble – I still think I’m kicking the shit out of 95% of my peers in most aspects of life – but that doesn’t make me some sort of guru. Multiple times over the past week, I’ve drafted and deleted several posts that didn’t work, because they were dishonest. I wrote them trying to sound like someone who’s figured it all out. But since that’s not really me, writing them was painfully slow, and the end result came off forced. Most importantly, it just wasn’t fun.

In one of my earlier posts, I laid out why I started blogging:

Why?

Start a blog, that is. My answer: Why the hell not? But my granddaddy taught me to never trust a man whose motives you don’t understand. Having now passed that advice on to you, I feel I should explain my reasons for writing Freedom Twenty-Five.

Or at least try to. “Why the hell not” pretty much covers it. I woke up one day, took a look at my life and decided it wasn’t the one I wanted to be living. I realized that I needed to radically change my habits if I wanted to radically change my results. Writing prolifically and publicly about my dreams and fears seemed like a major, comfort-zone-shaking change, so I started doing it.

Passion and a manic episode will only take a man so far though. Why am I channeling my surplus energy into writing instead of, say, cocaine? Well, starting a blog is cheaper. But it also benefits my life in a few other specific ways:

Selfish blog rationale #1) I can open up my goals to the world at large, and subject myself to ridicule if I don’t follow through on them. If I publish my plans to, say -  make a billion dollars, sleep with Beyonce and replace Keith Richards as lead guitarist for The Rolling Stones, all in a single weekend – then I’d better actually do it, or I’ll have failed my legions of devoted readers.

Selfish blog rationale #2) Writing for an audience forces me to be honest with myself. I had thought that I understood my situation and thought processes perfectly, until I tried to write them all down. Then I realized that my razor-sharp self-awareness was actually just an amorphous blob of unarticulated feelings, half-thoughts and unfocused energy.

Selfish blog rationale #3) I want to get paid to write. If this blog becomes wildly popular, I can sell ebooks, “real” books, and give paid talks. Or, I could just cover the site with pop-ups and sell my mailing list to Nigerian ex-royalty.

Selfish blog rationale #4) Why does a man do anything in his life? I want to meet hot babes who like bloggers. Ladies, you know you’re out there. Until I achieve C-list internet fame though, I can still somewhat-plausibly tell girls I meet that I’m a “writer.”

Selfish blog rationale #5) Not to get all mushy, but I think a lot of people my age are feeling the same malaise I am. Maybe I can inspire a few of them to snap out of it. That feels good.

So that’s where I’m coming from. Freedom Twenty-Five is going to help me set goals, sort through my thoughts, and let me sleep better at night knowing I’m trying to make the world a better place. Also, I want to get money, get famous, and get laid. Don’t we all?

And that’s the mentality that made writing Freedom Twenty-Five enjoyable for me in the past.

In Zen, there is a concept called Shoshin, translated as “Beginner’s Mind.” No twenty-five year old, no matter how awesome and destined for greatness he thinks he is, should even consider discarding his Beginner’s Mind. So you know what? Fuck trying to edit posts into perfection. Fuck tweaking this site’s appearance, unless I wake up one day I and decide I really want to do it. Fuck SEO, fuck grammar, and fuck Twitter.

In a decade or so, I’ll write a serious, carefully-edited book about the 14-step program I used to effortlessly earn millions, assemble a harem of supermodels and conquer the world. Until then, I’m going to chill out and work on my Shoshin.

A day begins like many past, time’s passage barely tracked
Hot Irish Cream, in steel mug steams
Unsweetened, bitter, black.

Old sandals kicked from carefree feet, replaced by shallow shine
A shirt tucked in, A tie straightened
One more ant gets into line.

This human slumps, straight back now hunched, into his Aeron throne
Inbox checked for daily dreck,
Assigned to timid drones.

But wait! This soft-flabbed husk of a man, beneath, within lurks a beast!
A savage meat-eater, a hunter and breeder
Heart-beating, spear-wielding, blood-greased.

Trace his bloodline farther back, and the wonders you will find
A mammoth slain, with axe blood-stain’d
Quick feet, and agile mind.

A tribal leader also full, of hunger, passion, fire
His lust for blood, wars fought for mud
Only death made the warrior tire.

Nearer still to civil times, many masterpieces wrought
By the hero’s son, who with paintings won
The hearts of the women he sought.

Return now to our office drone, in the year two-thousand ten,
His life not cruel nor dangerous
Not like those savage men!

No spear required, not in this life, his sword need not be unsheathed,
His duels now fought with PowerPoint,
Fresh meat, Whole Foods bequeaths.

His mate he’ll seduce, if that is the word, not with any talent or wit,
But via E-Harmony, where his income he’ll list
And his interests are cleverly writ.

The good life he seeks – job, family and friends –security, safety and peace
But in blood lurks a creature, an animal born
Of his savage ancestors deceased.