A Critique of Adam's 28 Essentials for a Man

As a man, you need only one thing: Know Yourself

Again, please understand, I like Adam, he is a good friend and even if he is Australian, I am not “having a go” at his list. I am merely discussing it (in my usual brutal and direct fashion to save time, and because I have this intro already and what more do you want, a salve for your fragile feelings?).

Furthermore, his list of 28 traits seems to be from around 2016, so I expect a LOT of these will have changed or been upgraded, at least in his mind, if not his blog.

The TL;DR version is simply this:

All a man needs to do in life is: Know (for) Himself.

I explained this in more depth in my book on the Russian Martial System I practiced then taught for years: Systema.

In essence it’s the oldest, simplest, and most complete instruction for any man so as to become a complete and best version of himself. Above all: Know Yourself.

I merely improved upon it a little by adding the bracketed (for) in between the two words. The point of this was because aside from knowing yourself at the very core, you also need to test and figure things out for yourself before you can really be sure about anything. Of course, some things we all take for granted, the Sun rising in the East and 2+2=4 kind of stuff, but if you have any doubt at all… investigate. Seek the highest objective truth in all things. In other words, Know for yourself.

By bracketing the (for) I allow for both versions.

And that, is really all you need.

Now, if you wish my take on Adam’s 28 things that he recons you need to be a “real man” or a modern man (why that should differ from an ancient man is nowhere explained)¹ here you are:

1. Moderate in the physical world is fine, moderate in spirit is not. Be an absolute zealot in the truth. Will you make mistakes? Certainly. Try to avoid life-altering ones. But moderate in dealing with the evil, deceitful, liars of this world? No.

2. Shaving: I agree. Leaving aside any Deniro stuff (he’s an insufferable lib in real life who avoided any investigation into an alleged incident with a minor decades ago) and with the corollary that this applies to a man that has social duties (like work in an office) but it in no way forms part of his core. Men that are actually men don't stress overmuch on this stuff. And if you turn up at their home or their hobby away from people unnanounced you may find him unshaven and in his underpants while he takes a spanner to his car or weighs the powder for his ammo on a little scale by hand.

   Because 1. if you’re going to be a moderate in the physical, that hardly means being picture perfect 24/7, now, does it?

3. This just falls under the generic label of don't be a pussy or a faggot. No need to "never say sorry". Say it when it is correct to do so. Tell everyone to fuck off when it's not. This is so simple, that I wonder why anyone has to spell it out. Like all of these things, the one and only thing you really need to do is simply to know yourself.

4. Agree. Do some form of sport ideally.  I value aerobic exercise above mere strength,  so I disagree with Adam's take on it. But I come from a long martial arts background, and I can tell you that without exception, the easiest people to defeat are body builders.

   And more often than you believe, years of antigravity exercises (pushups, squats, chinups etc) will make you actually stronger than people who lift weights at the gym.

5. Bullshit. A man will drink whatever, whenever, if he wants to, and not have a single second worrying about the absurd and superficial concept of uncorking a bottle of wine as some fucking male rite of passage. Without exception, the best men I have known would drink the most refined champagne or the cheapest boxed wine with the same approach. And not care at all if they found the box wine agreed with them more. Pondering such superficial nonsense is the mark of someone that feels he needs to masquerade as a "real man". 

6. See 5.

7. While apparently this has some truth to it, in reality, this falls under the generic rule that a man does what he wants and goes where he wants. Pretty much regardless of anything else beyond his personal (and necessarily well-defined, because: know yourself) ethics. I have met plenty of people who travelled a lot and yet remained unmitigated faggots, and men who lived all their life in the place they were born who were undoubtedly men. Travel, as with the number of women you have bedded can, give you a broader perspective on life in general and maybe open your eyes to some truth about the human conditions, but it can also lull you into a false sense of accomplishment. Or worse, lead you into thinking that the traveling, or the sex, in se makes you "cooler", or better. Furthermore, Travel as, when, and how, YOU see fit. There is something to learn from travelling alone as there is to doing so with friends, relatives, or even people you dislike. Travelling in se is not the thing. As always, your living through it and learning your own limits, behaviours, interactions, and thoughts, is. Limiting it to travelling solo is an artificially sterilised version of life.

8. Generally agree with caveats. Some professions require a degree to be practiced, like being a surgeon, or an engineer, so if you are set on one of those, you probably need to get a degree.

   Can’t argue with that, it’s math. And notwithstanding the fact I never much followed this sound advice, it is sound advice and it should be learnt at a young age.

9. Can’t argue with that, it’s math. And notwithstanding the fact I never much followed this sound advice, it is sound advice and it should be learnt at a young age.

10. Confidence can ONLY come from… you guessed it… KNOWING YOURSELF.

    If you do, it doesn’t matter what others think or say. Ultimately confidence is simply a superb knowledge of self and of being successful at being as you want to be and continuing to do so more often over time reinforces that self-knowledge and corrects it as required.

11. Well… again, knowing yourself necessarily means spending at least some time alone.

12. Well, that’s just normal humans in general surely. Only ruminants and feral beasts eat with their mouth open. This needs to be said?

13. Again… this is basic stuff. Can I cook? Yes. Do I care to cook myself 5 star meals? No. I have more important things to worry about, though yes, eating healthily matters, but when I lived alone I basically ate octopus, bresaola, the occasional fish and sometimes a tub of 1kg of natural yoghurt and some lard. And water. I don’t think I switched the stove on once a week, other than for an occasional steak or stew. Cooking for others can be a rare thing and then it’s different, maybe some guys like cooking. Good for them. Is it an essential? No. It’s just a basic thing, like you should be aware of how to use a gun, a knife, and change a tire. Nothing special about it.

14. Meh. It depends. Being offended at personal slights is pointless. But sometimes, teaching an ignorant boor a lesson is a charitable act.

15. Again, I don’t see reading books as anything very different from breathing air. Anyone that is not actually illiterate (in which case he should learn how to become literate) or a complete moron, should read books. His addendum that it is the seeking of knowledge and not the reading in se that is important, is… again, obvious. And of course it all starts (and ends) with knowledge of…? Yup. Yourself.

16. I can’t even imagine contemplating the contemplation of recycling or not as being an essential quality for being a man. Or, excuse me, a “modern man”. What? Who cares?

17. I’m afraid I (again) simply cannot relate. I hate shopping for clothes for myself. If I were a millionaire I’d have some guy that can tell measures with a look build me the kind of clothes I’d like to wear. My wife might leave me, but I know I would look awesome. I have a suit that cost over a grand and was tailor made and I have suits bought of the rack and a couple that were sized. I have expensive dress shoes and random torn sneakers. Currently I don’t think I have a pair of jeans that isn’t ripped or stained somewhere, because I have worked on my farm for the last 3 years. I suppose it’s good generic advice to buy the best clothes you can. My contention has been that unless you turn up in your underpants at a cocktail party that is formal dress, you can mostly get by anyway. And in fact, if you did turn up at a cocktail party in your underpants, play it just right and you may become the star of the evening. In my twenties I regularly used to get asked where I bought this or that shirt (by men! And no, not gay ones either) because I like “different” ones, but I never had any idea of what store it came from, and the thought my clothing was there to compete against other mens’ clothing simply never occurred to me. I just bought what I liked. Or, rather, more often, getting dragged to shops by whatever woman I was with at the time, I’d point to something and ask if she could just please guess my size so I don’t have to waste more time trying it on.

18. Eh. Depends, but generally I agree. I left home at age 16 for school and basically never went back. But of course, if you are taking care of your dying father or something, different story. But yeah, as a rule, make your own way.

19. This falls directly under the label of knowing yourself. The deeper you dig, the more you will discover things you want to change, and then, so you should.

20. Sure. Get a second, third and fourth opinion too. Then ignore everyone and make up your own mind. That is what I do and what I advise my children to do.

21. In the simplest, crudest, most distilled form —which also explains why I basically say PUAs are mostly useless frauds— so-called “game” is just being a man. Who Knows Himself, has chosen to be how he is and acts accordingly. Pretty much any man that does that will have “game” as long as he deals with reality and not some internal delusion (which you won’t do if… yup… you Know Yourself).

22. The general thought here is that you should not be a slave to technology, with which I agree.

23. Yup. And getting on with it, is just being a man.

24. Not being in a serious relationship with any woman you don’t plan to marry within six months was in essence how I started out. And in fairness, I never remained in any relationship that I didn’t think at least had the potential to become lifelong for more than a very brief period of time that expressly was understood to be mostly for mutual entertainment. So In general I agree, despite from the outside my life looking very little like this at first glance.

25. Bullshit. With an explanation for the braindead: If something warrants me crying, I will cry. I don’t give a tiny shit about what anyone thinks of it. To date, not a single person has dared to say I was “weak” or whatever synonym one might use for that, because of it. Admittedly I don’t cry often, it’s relatively rare, and as you get older, things that hurt still don’t make you cry, but again, this obsession with the external and superficial “look” is such faggotry. I have zero problem crying for something that touches me deep enough. In my old (and eventually to be resuscitated blog) I wrote about how hearing a song while I was dancing (well spinning her around anyway) while holding my one year old daughter, when I actually heard and understood the lyrics, got to me all of a sudden (for reasons I explained then). No one was there other than my wife, but even if the room had been filled with Marlboro Men and the Camel guy from the cigarette pack, not a single one of them would have dared poke fun in a nasty way, because they would be crying next, while trying to re-swallow their balls back down to where they were before I kicked them. The point is not that man should never cry. It’s just that if you cry like and for the same reasons a woman, a little girl or little boy might, well… then there you are.

26. Generally my approach is that a father should teach his children to at least understand when they are to PRETEND to be civilised. And to not get caught if and when they behave as God and their (hopefully mostly good) true nature intended.

27. Life being unfair is common knowledge to everyone that is not an NPC above age 7, surely? This needs to be spelt out? For whom? To whom is this list even directed?!

28. Aside my current mission to form a Catholic (Sede) community that becomes self-sufficient enough to survive and overcome clown world and provide a haven for our children in the future, I have to admit that I have moved through life primarily if not alone, certainly on my own terms and without undue concern what anyone else thought of it. I always had good friends within a short time of moving to a new place, but again, that is just because if you know yourself, you recognise other men that know themselves too. And when one of these is of a similar mind, you quickly can become very good friends. Of course, having good friends is good. But I can go weeks without seeing another man and think nothing of it. Nor do I think I, for myself, necessarily need a group of men to associate with. I did, for years, I trained and taught karate and Systema over decades, so of course I had friends and other men to bounce thoughts off of, but I never saw this as any specific thing I went after, it was just a byproduct of my interests.

So that is my take on each of his takes, but lest you get the idea I am just taking potshots at Adam, I am not. I am only saying that almost 10 years later, and a divorce behind him, Adam has probably distilled a lot of those thoughts, and it is good to help each other “purify” our philosophies between friends.

As I said, my own philosophy is really very simple and was put in specific writing back in 2011, though I’d held it since my teenage years. And the greeks knew it too, since the saying still survives at Delphi, where I visited, almost by accident, in Greece.

Know Yourself.

A really decent review on a book I have not read.

1. So let me do it here. The changing of social mores, times and “acceptable” behaviour do NOT require that men somehow become “different”. Transport an ancient Spartan to the modern world and explain to him how things work and he may well end up in jail or dead if he is not too smart. If he is, he will change his approach, without shifting one iota from his core belief systems. A man is a man. Here, a thousand years ago or a thousand year hence.