MGTOW Life: Roosh V’s Curious Self-Evaluation

He penned an article reflecting on his misspent life. I draw different conclusions based upon the self-evaluation… the influence of Cultural Christianity.

8 Personal Defects That Allowed Me To Worship Fornication For 18 Years

8 Personal Defects That Allowed Me To Worship Fornication For 18 Years

20 January 2020

Last year I released a new edition of The Best Of Roosh: Volume 1, a compilation of 87 articles I published between 2006 and 2013, during the stretch of time I was most committed to a lifestyle of fornication. While re-editing these articles in 2019, I noticed eight blindspots, flaws, and rationalizations that allowed me to perform behaviors that were causing me great self-harm. Here they are…

1. I was frustrated and full of angst

I’m struck by how angry I was, not only at women but also at “beta males” for valuing women beyond the sexual. Where did this anger come from? Why was I was so mean during the time I was extracting the most from the world (in terms of sex and novelty)?

They deserve to be hated for their endless, society-destroying pandering that God names Original Sin. Better to visit a whore than give your daughter a STEM education!

But Roosh doesn’t talk like that was HIS motivation:

First, I was projecting anger outwardly as a way to relieve the guilt and meaningless of casual sex. I was participating in exceedingly shallow behavior that had no moral justification, so my attacks against others were a way to relieve my own condemnation. The more shallow my actions, the more I had to step up my attacks against those around me.

Second, I simply wasn’t receiving joy from my efforts, regardless of the quantity or quality of women I was sleeping with. My ego was being rewarded, and I was also earning money from the sex guides I was writing, which allowed me to continue funding my worldwide fornication efforts, but none of it was leading to contentment. It was not even leading to short-term contentment because I was adapting to casual sex as time went on. The first time you try coffee, you feel a noticeable energy boost, but if you drink coffee daily, you long ago stopped feeling the kick, and instead drink it to avoid a negative (fatigue). I was engaging in casual sex simply to avoid a negative, of feeling like a “loser” or experiencing pleasure withdrawal, instead of gaining a positive.

A standard description of addictive behavior, with the twist that Roosh was able to monetize it into a self-supporting behavior. I wonder, however, why he connects his anger at other men to the globo-pimp lifestyle. Perhaps the picture will clear as we continue reading.

2. I wanted more than my fair share

When someone is born, God ensures that they receive as much food, shelter, and material comfort as necessary for their salvation, as long as they follow His rules.

No. That was the Old Testament. It is not Christ’s deal.

I didn’t know about His rules nor did I care to find out. Instead, I wanted to throw away the generous plate of food set before me at the dinner table for the plates of other men. I wanted their notch counts and caliber of women, their travel experiences, their fame, and their passive internet income, and then when I got all of that, I thought I would be able to see myself as a superior man, when in actuality my “gains” were losses. When I did make it in the material sense, I saw myself as some kind of lion, the king of the jungle, when I was just one of numerous hyena chewing on a leftover corpse.

I was also extractive. I wanted to remove value from the world at the same time I attacked others for being extractive themselves. I would try to use a woman’s body for sex and then whine like a baby if she used me for a $10 cocktail. I would erupt in anger if a woman dared to have a 30-minute conversation with me when she didn’t have any intention of giving sex. I now sit at the dinner table and bless the food that is intended for me. I do not look at what is on the plates of other men.

These two paragraphs were what got me thinking. Why is Roosh beating himself up? Of course a Godless man wants what he wants, without regard to quaint notions of arbitrary morality. It’s not something to regret, really; an honest atheist is much better than a hypocritical believer. It’s something to grow out of as we learn better.

Now that he’s Christian and regarding that life as immoral, good, that’s progress. But there’s also a false guilt of having “taken too much”. Greed isn’t an absolute vice. I’ve met righteous billionaires and parasite hobos, and a couple guys who go from rags to riches and back again repeatedly. And let’s not forget, his every single conquest had been a willing participant.

Fornicating with one woman isn’t categorically more or less greedy than fornicating with a thousand. Christ teaches that sin is of the heart, not of the action.

3. I made a false idol out of the vagina

The vagina was my god. I uprooted myself from my family, traveled around the world, and shaped my inner being to access as much of it as I could, all to feel its pleasure and validation. I am embarrassed to admit how many thousands of hours I wasted pursuing the female flesh, with barely any consideration of the human attached to it. One only needs to look at a listing of the books I unpublished to see how heavily I worshipped the vagina.

I sense the pattern of his new ideology in the boldfaced passage and cannot see it as a purely Christian perspective. There is nothing wrong with a man leaving family behind to accomplish what he wishes in life. Does Roosh see his fornicating past as bad because it was immoral, unhealthy conduct, or because he wasn’t being loyal to his roots?

Ironically, I thought I was a master of the vagina. Through my game, I believed that I was a modern hypnotist, a keymaster of the flesh. Instead, I was its slave. I toiled ceaselessly for a few minutes of genital rubbing, and since that was hardly commensurate to the effort I was expending, I became a fornication guru to sweeten the deal. All that wasted time, lost forever.

Not wasted time if it led him to God. It’s a poor, sheltered, untested man who lives with no regrets. God values our character, not our accomplishments. What does Roosh wish he had spent his time on instead?

I would receive a lot of comments during this time that said I was a “pussy beggar” or “desperate.” While many of these comments were uttered in ill will, there was some truth to them. I didn’t beg with my hand out, but I begged through my dedication of time and mental energy.

Not the same thing. I dedicate my time and energy to all sorts of things, some profitable and some intentionally not. It’s okay to have obsessions and strange interests. It’s part of healthy manhood, frankly, to enjoy something odd without giving a damn for the approval of others.

4. I thought fornication was “evolutionary”

No matter how immoral your behavior is, you still need to find a justification so you can look at the mirror and see yourself as a “good” person. Therefore, you must lie to yourself. I rationalized that my grotesque behavior was actually evolutionary because I intended to spread my seed far and wide and impregnate countless women. There was only one problem with that justification: I wasn’t impregnating any women.

Nothing to learn here. We are in agreement that the main purpose of evolution is to excuse immorality.

5. I thought fornication was the end-all-be-all of male existence

Whatever you lacked in boyhood or early adolescence will become your idol later in life. If you grew up poor, you go on to cherish money. If you were a late bloomer like me who received practically no sexual attention as a teenager, you go on to cherish sex. In my case, I thought there could be no higher achievement or experience than sex, and that it was an even greater good than love. Once I clearly felt the downsides from my pursuit of sex, and it took my entire adult life for that to happen, the spell was lifted and I came to see sex with a woman I didn’t care for as a step below masturbation because of the drama it inevitably caused.

So that’s what Roosh wishes he had spent his time on instead, healthy masculinity. But he didn’t know at the time what healthy masculinity was… and frankly, masculine abstinence would not have been rewarding.

It turns out that pursuing sex so vigorously was actually the source of my problems instead of the solution. My anger, frustration, malaise, and existential dread bloomed from my sexual activities. Those problems are now almost entirely gone. It tends to be the case that the behavior we think will solve our problems actually creates more problems.

If this was true then why not correct it at the time? Why not sit down and think “this isn’t fun anymore. What else do I want to do”?

Perhaps I’m searching too hard. Some people are natural-born followers who don’t handle independent living well. Nothing wrong with that except, as we see here, a man has got to be the leader of his own life. No substitute authorities.

Living for family instead of hedonism is not a guaranteed escape from idolatry. Rather the opposite, consider the abuse of “for the children!” thinking.

6. I thought I was right

I was so sure of my conclusions. There was little doubt that fornication was the correct path, and anyone who disagreed with me was either jealous, sleeping with ugly girls, or deeply misguided. People who said that my behavior was immoral or sinful wished that they could sleep with European babes like me. The men who were stuck in their boring hometowns were not strong enough to uproot themselves, travel the world, and learn foreign languages like me.

Of course he believed in what he was doing. Same as now. That’s normal.

What isn’t normal, or at least not healthy, is wishing for stasis. An absence of troubles. Roosh was a globetrotter who regretted not staying “rooted” but many’s the man who lived in his boring hometown hating himself for lacking the courage to risk.

Roosh’s self-detected defects are beginning to sound like “I deviated from my elders’ prescribed life path”. Which is not Christianity.

How could I have been so certain of behaviors that I now see as wrong? Because I ignored the teachings of holy men before me, I ignored my conscience, and I believed the lies and deceptions that entered my mind.

Per his self-reported history, and I cannot claim to be an authority here, the doubts came when he came to terms with the death of a close friend. Again, a typical moment of reckoning. It’s always one thing to be a materialist when you’re at the top of the world in good health and another to face the Grim Reaper in a failing shell of mere flesh.

I have trouble with such reckoning. I follow Christ because I believe He is correct, not because He gives my life meaning. Christianity has brought me little meaning, family or comfort and neither did I ever expect it to. Instead, I take the view that life’s purpose is to become who I want to be for eternity, now that I’m freed from existential worries and behavioral quotas. Over the years, I’ve had to make peace with the fact that this attitude qualifies me as a freak.

That may be why I have trouble with men coming to God for emotional reasons rather than rational reasons. On one hand, they’re no less a believer than I am. Nobody gains Heaven because they’re smart. On the other hand, they come to God expecting to gain something from Him–recall Roosh’s words about God giving everybody their fair share–and methinks that will be a recipe for disappointment in the coming years.

I think it is also part of how Churchians can tolerate crimes against God, from ignorance of Scripture to tolerating open Sodomy. None of those crimes endanger what the Churchian hopes to gain from his practice of religion… friends and childcare, often as not.

The fact that I was so wrong, when I was certain I was right, has made it impossible to trust myself today. If the behavior I’m about to embark on does not glorify God, either directly or indirectly, or is not clearly His will, there’s a chance it’s part of Satan’s plan to corrupt me and those around me.

Roosh, not trusting yourself is how you ended up where you did. You still refuse to take charge of your own life. Back then, it took the shape of youthful temptations; today, it’s taking the shape of a sheltered life of guaranteed returns.

The MGTOW life is an intentional life. What do you want? Do it. Who do you want to be? Become it. The atheist Roosh should not let the quest for pussy make him miserable and the Christian Roosh should not entrust his salvation to a third party.

Not that Roosh ever claimed to follow the MGTOW path. It is curious how different we are. Roosh doesn’t trust his own judgment despite having lived by it for 18 years whereas I hold the beliefs I do in open defiance of every priest I’ve ever met and nearly every priest I’ve ever heard of.

7. I thought that things in the physical world could make me happy

I believed that I could be a happier person from accumulating material. More sex, more money, more fame, and more status would elevate my base level of happiness, but that didn’t happen. Because my lifestyle was the disease, the opposite occurred. More bangs meant more feelings of meaninglessness. More money meant more anxiety from losing it, or anxiety from not using it in a way that increased my stature. More fame and status meant more fear of losing my level of popularity, attention, or worldly respect.

If worldly success isn’t fun then you’re doing it wrong. Ecclesiastes 2:9-11 “Then I became great and increased more than all who preceded me in Jerusalem. My wisdom also stood by me. All that my eyes desired I did not refuse them. I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure, for my heart was pleased because of all my labor and this was my reward for all my labor. Thus I considered all my activities which my hands had done and the labor which I had exerted, and behold all was vanity and striving after wind and there was no profit under the sun.”

There is a pattern here of Roosh regretting not only his past sin, but the general life he lived. There’s no theological cause for the latter which suggests an ulterior motive. Here, I have the answer presupplied in his joining Orthodoxy, the ethno-nationalist branch of Christianity.

I think Roosh’s actual self-evaluation is that he found himself emotionally isolated and returned to the religion of his homeland. That’s okay as far as it goes, but me being emotionally isolated despite loyalty to God, I know that “coming home to Christ” in expectation of mortal benefit is the foxhole religion of Current Year.

It happens a lot in Protestant circles, Prots switching to the “true Christianity” of RCC or Orthodoxy about the time they get married with kids. I have trouble believing it’s an honest epiphany rather than Benedict Option life-boating.

Well, they haven’t abandoned God. But one wonders what will happen when it’s time to cut and run again.

I can’t stress how every attempt to solve a life problem had the opposite intended effect, and from all that materialistic chasing, the only two things that have made life worth living in the present is the love of my family and my relationship with God. Anything else I’ve pursued was an empty distraction.

It is good that you’ve come this far, Roosh, but you will need to pick one. Ours is a jealous God.

Partial confirmation of Cultural Christianity:

8. I listened to African-American music to help me get in the sex mood

In my older writing, I used a lot of slang that is more commonly used in urban America. I had listened to hip hop music and came to believe in the message that sex and money were the most logical goals for a man to pursue. In fact, to get me pumped up for a night of pursuing fornication, I would listen to hip hop songs…

I sling a little ghetto myself when the mood is right and know enough Valley Girl to have been hanged in the Old World for opposing the King’s English had they understood a word of it. Behold Eighties Daddy Issues!

Her real name is, indeed, Moon Unit Zappa. It was actually a pre-Internet trolling of California culture but I digress.

Culture does not lead to righteousness, else yours truly, a child of Los Totally Not Angeles would not be a Christian. It can make righteousness easier, certainly, but it’s just as true that living in the darkness makes the light shine brighter. Commiefornia has already reached the point at which people might pass out upon hearing the Word of God.

I know Roosh is a real Christian because he’s repentant. He burned the trash he once peddled and cleaned up his social media. That’s solid. But whatever he eventually moves on to, I hope it is something he wants and not something a human authority told him to want.

Human authorities are not to be blindly trusted.