This passage is excerpted from Andy Nowicki's Ruminations of a Low-Status Male, Volume 4: On Being Unloved, which will be published soon.)
In a previous volume of this ongoing work, I spoke of the state of being unwanted. In this volume, I have selected to meditate upon the state of being unloved.
Again, as before, I wish to avoid the distracting specter of sentimentalism or the niggling bugaboo of self-pity in attacking this subject matter, which is difficult, given that the subject matter seems almost inherently to be possessed of viscerality. It’s hard for a man to speak of being unwanted without either seeming bitter, sad, angry, or in despair over his condition. The same applies for the state of being unloved, although the shade of difference between these two closely-related states warrants further explication.
In a previous volume of this ongoing work, I spoke of the state of being unwanted. In this volume, I have selected to meditate upon the state of being unloved.
Again, as before, I wish to avoid the distracting specter of sentimentalism or the niggling bugaboo of self-pity in attacking this subject matter, which is difficult, given that the subject matter seems almost inherently to be possessed of viscerality. It’s hard for a man to speak of being unwanted without either seeming bitter, sad, angry, or in despair over his condition. The same applies for the state of being unloved, although the shade of difference between these two closely-related states warrants further explication.
A man earnestly wants
to be wanted by a woman, but he ardently pines
to be loved by one. When a woman loves a man, the man feels himself possessed
of a sense of security which had never been granted him before. He experiences
this love as a blessing, as an act of grace, and it nearly overwhelms him with
gratitude to contemplate its reality. But when this love is withdrawn-- under
such a circumstance as the one I described in Volume 2 of this work—he jumps
back with a severe start, like a man waking from a blissful sleep into a cold realm
that he thought he had left behind forever, but which it turned out was his
actual condition all along. Joyous as his extended dream may have been, it was
indeed illusory.
Or… had it
actually, at some point, been real? This prospect is even more difficult to
contemplate, because if the experience of being loved had truly been an
authentic one, it seems like its foundations ought to have been made of sterner stuff. What is love, after all,
if it does not eternally endure? In the forlorn words of one singer, “If lovenever lasts forever, then what’s ‘forever’ for?”
Being unwanted wounds the ego, but finding oneself unloved confounds
the soul. The unwanted man shrivels with embarrassment, but the unloved man doesn’t
find himself at all; rather, he loses
himself. If having love in one’s life is an orienting experience, in that it
helps a man to know who he is and to find direction, losing love is, by
contrast a disorienting ordeal; one’s
equilibrium is flung into disarray, to the point where up may well be down and
east may well be west—nothing is assured any longer; that essential, salving
sense of certainty has now fled forever.
*************
But then there are those who have never been loved.
It only stands to reason that such ones, in our
age, are viewed through a political lens
and so are relentless vilified in an
altogether canting and hypocritical manner. Those who would receive pity under
normal circumstances—i.e., the love-less, are rendered as shameful and worthy
of revulsion Thus, we have the grisly, media-hyped spectacle of the “incel.”
*************
Unfortunately, infamous spree killer Elliot Rodger is
commonly identified as the proto-incel figure, and the pre-massacre videos he
recorded in 2014 reinforce a sort of “entitlement” notion in an almost comical
way. But even if
Rodger’s case, the discerning observer can easily see that the arrogance he
projects is nothing more that sheer bluster; he talks himself up because he
feels put down and asserts his superiority entirely defensively.
In any event, Rogers’s response to his circumstances is of
dubious relevance when considered in light of the incel phenomenon, generally
speaking. The incels’ folly lies not in their displaying any proclivity to mayhem,
nor does it even lie in their frequently manifested spite and bitterness. For
the most part, incels are not violent
men, and their anger and frustration is in a way understandable, given that
their biologically-ingrained desires are continually being frustrated. Would we
scorn the hungry for being denied food? Would we scold the thirsty for desiring
the cooling taste of water?
Instead, the incels’ folly lies in his buying into the
societally-reinforced notion of status: the notion that if you aren’t a
romantic success you are nothing; that a man’s worth is determined by the
amount of validation he receives from women. These are the baleful bugaboos that he must learn to overcome.
*************
The problem is that wanting to free oneself from such
impulses—or rather, to order oneself so that when such impulses are ignored
when they manifest themselves, since no biologically-derived compulsion can
ever entirely be deleted, erased, or eradicated from one’s consciousness—requires
the adoption of a certain uniquely type of mindset, one which is as scornful of
status-seeking and contemptuous of the notion of winning validation through the
flaunting of perceived “social proof” as is the culture’s contempt for those it
regards as “losers.”
To train oneself in this regard is tricky. What is required
is to cease to have interest in impressing others. The problem is that one is, in
a sense “programmed” (that is to say, designed) to desire the esteem of others.
In a less depraved era, such an impulse--- i.e., the natural desire for
validation—could easily be harnessed for one’s own betterment. After all, it is
good to covet the approval of those whose approval signifies that one is
righteous and upstanding.
However, a great deal of mischief is unleashed when those
from whom one seeks approval are themselves most glaringly unrighteous and non-upstanding.
The effect in such a cultural circumstance is to make a man desire to do that
just exactly that which is most improper, imprudent, and morally objectionable,
in order to win the validation of those he wishes to impress. That is to say,
the ones he finds worthy of impressing are those whom he ought to disdain;
nevertheless, he has been trained to see such people as worthy of being
well-impressed upon: he is taught to view them as being above him, when he ought properly to regard them as beneath him.
So he faces a most unbecoming situation, one in which his
natural-born impulse is at odds with his awareness of the truth. Most
humiliatingly, he finds himself “trained,” as it were, to do the very sort of
thing that is least becoming of character and least in line with his actual
legitimate interests.
*************
The first step towards breaking one’s conditioning is recognizing
it as such, and acting accordingly.
This may ultimately come down to the course
of action often known as “faking it ’til you make it,” whereby one behaves in
accord with one’s better judgment, ignoring all the while one’s baser consciousness,
which aches to achieve the validation of one’s supposed superiors (who are
actually one’s inferiors).
Thus the recovering “incel”—or more broadly speaking, the low-status male under examination, may
be enabled to cease venerating those whose worthiness is questionable at best, on
account of the latter having been accorded status that he lacks. It is through
willed defiance—against cultural norms, and against his own warped inclinations—that
he can begin to generate the sort of inner strength he needs to break free.
Like a bodybuilder whose muscle mass increases incrementally
every time he hits the weights, so every instance of his willed defiance
conditions him to shatter his conditioning and to grow psychically healthier.
Andy Nowicki, assistant editor of Affirmative Right, is the author of eight books, including Under the Nihil, The Columbine Pilgrim, Considering Suicide, and Beauty and the Least. Visit his Soundcloud page and his YouTube channel. His author page is Alt Right Novelist.
