Category Archives: Socio-Sexual Studies

Mangina Melodies: “Bend Me, Shape Me” by American Breed

Might as well stay in the Swingin’ ’60s this week. And what a contrast to this week’s Alpha Anthem, not just in the color of the pills, but the talent of the bands.

I find it deeply embarrassing that this band went by the name of “American Breed.” I hope they flew Old Glory at half-mast the day this song hit the charts. The gist of the lyrics is some thirsty beta orbiter is whining to the girl on his pedestal: “I’m so pussywhupped already–aren’t you impressed? Won’t you have sex with me now?”

This kind of desperation would be revolting to even the blue pill crowd…if it weren’t put to music. But music can sell the most ridiculous ideas (and dialog) like no other medium. Which is saying a lot, because TV and movies have sold our culture a whole bill of goods.

The lyrics speak for themselves. Here they are:

You are all the woman I need, and baby you know it,
You can make this beggar a king, a clown or a poet.
I’ll give you all that I own.
You got me standing in line
Out in the cold,
pay me some mind.
Bend me, shape me
Anyway you want me,
Long as you love me, it’s all right
Bend me, shape me
Anyway you want me,
You got the power to turn on the light.
Everybody tells me I’m wrong to want you so badly,
But there’s a force driving me on, I follow it gladly.
So let them laugh I don’t care,
Cause I got nothing to hide,
All that I want is you by my side.
Bend me, shape me
Anyway you want me,
Long as you love me, it’s all right
Bend me, shape me
Anyway you want me,
You got the power to turn on the light.
Bend me shape me anyway you want me…

Alpha Anthems: “Under My Thumb” by the Rolling Stones

The Stones were not only slopping over with talent, they were also quite prolific.  It’s hard to think of another band (as opposed to a single artist) who can compare when it comes to volume of quality work. The Beatles and Led Zeppelin come to mind–both groups were also uber-talented and versatile; but neither were cranking out music for as many years.

As noted in Fast Cars and Rock & Roll, most bands remembered as great recorded at least two-to-three killer tunes. Few of them did better than that. But the Stones cranked out albumfulls of songs which stand the test of time, with very few turkeys in between. Their work in the 1960s, in particular, was phenomenal. Their golden years, I would call it.

You wouldn’t expect guys who look like they did to come up with an alpha anthem. In fact, somebody in the manosphere should post about the evolving standards of sexual marketplace value (SMV) some time. It’s puzzling to look at the appearance of hippie rockers (and the hair bands they inspired) and imagine that females of the time perceived them as masculine. But apparently they did. Or they were just tripping too far out on acid to notice who they were giving out all that free love to.

This particular song is one I never used to think about much, but it has fresh relevance now. The lyrics tell of the triumphant transition of a young man from blue pill to red pill.

The former supplicating beta’s girlfriend once had him down; pushed him around. But he’s turned her into “the sweetest pet in the world.” She’s changed her ways and now “does just what she’s told.” She’s dressing differently (more feminine, I’d guess) and now “talks when she’s spoken to.”

Any wonder why the bra-burning feminists hated this song?

Take it easy, babe. The change has come.

Triumph of the Alpha…er, Sun

I suspect Wilbur Smith is a closet anthropologist…not just because of the attention he gives animals in some of his novels, but because of the human actions and interactions he depicts–usually according to type.  In this novel especially, Smith writes like somebody who is a manosphere junkie…except he doesn’t use the lingo.

There is a beta protagonist (Ryder Courtney); an alpha hero (Penrod Ballentyne), some nubile Victorian-era babes rife with symptoms of hypergamy/AFBB…and a whole lot of blood and thunder.

All these characters, and more, intersect at the siege of Khartoum. They are all depicted masterfully by the writer, who gets you to care about them before shoving them to the brink of death repeatedly. At any point in this book there’s a lot at stake and the suspense is high.

Like most true alpha dogs, Ballentyne is willing to take bigger risks than the average Joe. While this elevates his status in the eyes of women from both cultures (Muslim and Western), it also tends to put him in the most hopeless situations. His life dangles by a precarious thread for most of the second act, though he earns the respect of his bloodthirsty captors just being himself (a theme I’ve noticed in other Smith novels). And also like most true alpha dogs, Ballentyne is willing to dish out harsh preemptive justice, retaliation, and revenge, with little to no remorse. And he’s certainly not above using people to get what he wants.

Courtney is a good man who is moral to a fault. He’s sympathetic, smart, and certainly not lacking in courage, but destined to be a beta provider for a headstrong woman (of which the Victorian era had a few). There’s one scene in particular where he really needs a big dose of alpha ruthlessness, but his untimely mercy puts everyone at risk and causes unnecessary suffering and death.

This novel accelerates to a quick start and romps like a steamroller right to the end.

This is high adventure worth reading for a number of reasons.

A Lesson on Hypergamy From the Big Screen

An action comedy from the 1980s features one of the last thoroughly masculine heroes in pop culture. By the time Crocodile Dundee hit theaters, male role models were already being relegated to one of the following sterotypes:

  1. The incompetent boob. You can find this guy on any sitcom at any time on any channel. (He also populates plenty of big-screen comedies.) He needs the obligatory strong, take-charge independent woman to rein in his hare-brained schemes (I Love Lucy in reverse). Of course she doesn’t need him…but they’re together anyway because patriarchy.
  2. The funny homosexual. Also found in pretty much every comedy.
  3. The metrosexual. This occurs more in the music industry than movies, but millions of young men get the idea that this is the way to be.
  4. The sympathetic wimp/Average Frustrated Chump. Found everywhere, especially romantic comedies.
  5. The dangerous violent sociopath/rapist/cheater/con man/serial killer/racist/wife-beater. This is the entertainment box into which Hollywood locks masculine men.

It’s a minor miracle Crocodile Dundee ever got made. But audiences loved it.

During an interview, actor/screenwriter Paul Hogan provided a keen insight about the Mick Dundee character. In a nutshell, what’s different about Dundee is he doesn’t change. What makes for interesting stories is to drop him into strange environments and watch how he deals with the dangers of them.

This pioneer-type hunter from the Outback is taken from his stomping grounds and transplanted in New York City. But his personality is so strong that (within the context of the film) he changes civilization…because civilization sure can’t change him.

In red pill parlance, this means Mick Dundee is a natural at maintaining frame. Not just with women, but in all situations.

If you’re not familiar with the movie, here’s the gist of it: Sue, a reporter from New York, hears about a man who survived a crocodile attack. She hunts him down. He lives up to the legend, and saves her life as well as performing other impressive feats. Sue talks him into visiting New York with her. He does, continuing to rescue her and perform impressive feats. A woman with milder-than-normal feminista conditioning, Sue is offended by his “chauvenism,” yet falls in love with him anyway.

There are a couple scenes worth highlighting.

When we first meet Dundee, it’s in a pub. He is obviously the alpha dog in this pack. All the other men look up to him and if there were many “Sheilas” around, they’d be throwing themselves at him, too.

Mick Dundee is the real deal, but even so, shortly after Sue arrives in the Outback, he resorts to some dramatics to accentuate his he-man image–like pretending to tell the time down to the minute by the position of the sun, and to dry-shave with his Bowie Knife. Although his overt attitude toward her is one of amused indifference, he’s obviously laying the machismo on thick in the hopes of impressing Sue.

And who could blame him after seeing her hidden charms in a scene like this?

Sue is involved with another media bigwig back in NYC, but alone with Mick on his turf, his natural he-man game is too much for her. She makes it clear she’s his for the taking while they’re there. Alpha Fux; Beta Bux.

In New York, Mick tags along with Sue and her beta provider boyfriend to a hoity-toity restaurant. The beta is under the assumption that on his civilized turf money and prestige equal alpha power, and “Tarzan” (as he calls Mick) is lowest on the totem pole. He flaunts this alleged power in front of Sue by challenging Mick to read the foreign language menu, and snidely slipping in some other veiled insults. Mick may be out of his element, but he recognizes the boyfriend is trying to humiliate him. He distracts Sue, reaches across the table and tags Beta Boy on the chin.

Sue is pissed at Mick on the one hand, but obviously lusting after him, too. Alpha Fux; Beta Bux.

Mick is invited to a fancy dinner at Sue’s parents, where Beta Boy pops the question to Sue. Mick is naturally the life of the party, and continues playing that role even though it’s obvious he wants Sue for himself. But he doesn’t throw a fit, make a scene, or even question her. You can almost hear him thinking: “What a waste. Oh well. Next.”

Crocodile Dundee is textbook red pill, and it’s got some funny parts, too.

How Men are Setting Themselves Up To Be “Crying Gamed”

Watch this video first, then I’ll have a few words.

Funny, right? I laughed, too, but not at all of it. There’s something sort of disturbing beneath the surface, here.

First of all, I get it: the hotter the chick, the crazier she can be.

1. Are you sure what plumbing is concealed by the clothes? 2. Is there any legitimate motivation to find out?

First point (and this is a minor one): what you’ve noticed is that the more physically attractive a woman is, the faster her rationalization hamster runs and the greater her sense of the feminine imperative. I guess you could call that a mental disorder; but I consider it more like programming. Like how a spoiled child (once she realizes she can get away with what others can’t) develops a superiority complex.

But what should disturb you is the punchline–this idea that you would rate a transvestite (or trans-whatever) an eight, nine, or ten.

Initially I was baffled. How could presumably heterosexual men (those in the video and the one who recommended it to me) even conceive of a she-male they would be so attracted to?

It didn’t take long to figure it out, though. And the answer is related to another baffling phenomenon among what seems to be the majority of men today, including among the red pill community.

That phenomenon has to do with the desired female body type.

“Feminine” by 2014 standards?

Looking solely at faces, it makes some sense that a person of one gender could masquerade as another–there are boys born with soft facial features who could artfully apply eyelashes, makeup, and so forth. Rating them in the 8-10 range is still a stretch IMO, but I’ll accept it in theory. (Of course, judging by the actresses in a lot of movies and TV shows, plain-faced is the new beautiful, anyway.)

The problem for potential cross-dressers (at least in a culture with more traditional gender roles and tastes) is that healthy male and female bodies do not look alike.

But this is far from a problem in our society, where so many males are attracted to women built like teenage boys. The emaciated scarecrow look is currently en vogue: Broad shoulders, narrow hips, six-pack abs and visible ribs. The only female characteristics commonly desired are breasts and long hair. Anything failing that criteria is called “fat.”

Mmm, shapely!

Some guy the other day actually said Kim Kardashian is fat. And he didn’t mean when she was pregnant, either. I pointed out that women are supposed to have some meat on the hips. Not only do wide hips help with childbirth, but put a shapely woman in high heels (or if you run into one of those super-rare treasures that knows how to walk like a lady even without high heels… then even sneakers and tight jeans will work) and simply watching her move from Point A to Point B is better than watching the Superbowl halftime show. Yes, that’s right: including the one with Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction.”

“Yeah, alright,” the guy said, “she should have hips…but not that are wider than her shoulders!”

“So in other words,” I said, “what you’re looking for is a man.”

I heartily agree with red pill men that femininity makes a woman desirable. What I don’t understand is why they insist that feminine personality should occupy a masculine physique. At least one of the professors I remember from college would smugly accuse you all of being a bunch of closet cases. Add to that the desire for women with deeper voices and butch attitudes (at least among the blue pill male population) and the evidence mounts.

A lot of gay mafiosos and homophiles will opine that everyone has latent homosexual proclivities. I don’t believe that; but then I can’t explain these bizarre mate selection tendencies, either. My best guess is that it’s largely inspired by self-contradictory conditioning from pop culture absorbed during a boy’s formative years in our gender-confused society.

kimbeach
She doesn’t have ribs or hip bones sticking out her skin!! Whale on the beach!

The French expression “Vive le difference!” makes a lot of sense to me. Men and women attract each other in large part not because we are biologically interchangeable, but because we are so different. We compliment each other, and that harmonious design is reflected right down to our body types.

Anybody can grow their hair long, or invest in fake boobs, guys.

I guess I understand the thrill of the unknown so far as some things go, but I can’t think of a more powerful boner-killer than not being sure what type of genitalia is inside a date’s panties (or whether they were born with it or not).

Alpha Anthems: “Speedo” by the Cadilacs

If you grew up with uncut Warner Brothers cartoons, maybe you remember that “Merry Melodies” outnumbered “Looney Toons.” Well, there’s a similar disparity in my Two-Fisted musical reviews.

Only because there’s a whole lot more songs written by or about(or from the perspective of) blue pill supplicating simps than anything else. Easily 75% of all popular music ever produced falls under the “love song” umbrella; and of course most of that is about elevating some precious snowflake to her rightful pedestal.

So in the vast wasteland of Mangina Melodies, I have to spread out the Alpha Anthems as best I can. Here’s the first one:

“Speedo” was recorded by The Cadilacs long before that word came into household use, and has nothing to do with Euro-stylish swimwear.

Speedo is the alpha dog’s nickname, derived allegedly from how fast he bumps, pumps and dumps. Locate’s ’em, loves ’em, leaves ’em. Finds ’em, feels ’em…you get the idea, I hope.

Although this is doo-wop, the lyrics borrow the A, A, B format of the blues.

Whether the lyricists of such songs truly were such big league pick up artists, or simply aspired to be (or cleverly marketed music to those who so aspired) I can’t say. But the hero of this song brags about how he games women and breezily overcomes their last minute resistance (“I’ve known some pretty women and have caused them to change their mind”). Also, the “I already have a boyfriend” defense is weak and easily brushed aside by this Don Juan (his reputation is for “takin’ other folks’s girls”).

What have we learned here, fellahs? I guess it comes down simply to “Don’t mess around with Speedo; he don’t ever take it slow.”

Mangina Melodies: “It Hurts Me Too” by Elmore James

20th Century music by the male of the species is loaded with wimpy blue pill sentiments. No doubt it provided subconscious reinforcement to the message drilled into us from parents, sisters, and the culture overall.

So why am I picking on the King of the Slide Guitar today? Especially with so many more blatant examples to choose from. Well, you could accuse me of just wanting to hear that Delta slide one more time, and you’d be partially right. But there’s something to be learned from identifying such blue pill wussery in a musical genre that gave the world such over-the-top paragons of machismo as Muddy Waters and Bo Diddley.

What we have in these lyrics is a self-deluded beta orbiter, pissing his life away waiting to graduate from the Friend Zone while the object of his one-itus serves as a willing doormat for some alpha dog out sowing his oats.

What this guy has done is become the emotional dishrag for the slut on his pedestal. He cleans up the messes made by the alpha dog, and once her emotional wounds are healed, her hypergamy leads her right back to the player’s harem. And she “loves him more” every time he wrecks her self esteem.

This song reminds me of a depressing ’80s titty flick called The Last American Virgin. Classic alpha fux/beta bux story.

Y’know what’s even more depressing? The slut might finally marry this frustrated chump one day. That’s when his heartache will really begin.

Corporate Circlejerks and the Female Affinity For Nancyboys

I had to sit through a day-long corporate meeting and I’m taking my frustration out on you.

There is a certain personality type that just luuuuuuuuuuu-uuuuuvs meetings. In fact, they’d probably rather spend an entire work year having meetings than actually doing any work. It seems to be the same personality type obsessed with titles and glorified job descriptions (which serve as camouflage to disguise the fact that they get paid for shuffling papers and enforcing/generating bureaucratic red tape).

During these self-congratulatory orgies with the trappings of business meetings, a lot of time and money is spent, but nothing gets produced. The best of them may present 45 minutes of useful information while the remaining seven hours and 15 minutes are little more than mass mutual ego-stroking–an opportunity for the vain and self-important to dress up and receive awards for dubious accomplishments.

This last meeting only reinforced my opinion. In addition, the Random Seat Assignment gods were pissed at me that day. There were two top-tier babes and at least four second-tier who could have wound up beside me. Instead, the seat to my right was occupied (at the invitation of an obese woman at my table) by probably the last individual on the company roster I would have preferred.

I’ve seen this effiminate little character around before at smaller-scale meetings. Don’t know what department he’s in and not interested in knowing. But I made an effort to be friendly (by Two-Fisted standards, anyway). Maybe the guy was raised by a single mom and only had sisters, and thus was completely oblivious to how uncomfortable he makes men with all his mincing and such.

I had to scrap this benefit-of-the-doubt upon noticing how every female in the company he was acquainted with fawned all over him. Several embraced him and kissed his cheek like a long lost sister. That’s kind of a giveaway.

Okay, western women have been squirting for metrosexuals from Rudolf Valentino to Prince. I get that. (Sorry I can’t provide any more recent examples, but I intentionally avoid pop culture as best I can.) But there was no sexual tension in these greetings–quite the opposite. It was obvious they found him as unthreatening as a stuffed animal.

Going back to junior high, before I truly believed that homosexuals actually existed, I couldn’t help noticing this weird upperclassman who preferred to hang out with the girls. Not for the natural reasons, either. He was obviously much more interested in gossiping with them than any sort of romantic ambitions, and the girls in his circle were all protective of him. None looked at him or reacted to him the way they did me or the other jocks. Their demeanor changed around him in some other way, like he was a puppy with a broken leg or something.

This is a consistent phenomenon in our culture. I always thought that junior high situation was rare when I was a kid; maybe it was rare to find among adults…but not so anymore. When in college I discovered that (prior to the doubled-down media blitz to legitimize homosexuality in the mind of Joe Public) such women were commonly referred to as “fag hags,” even among homophiles.

Now it seems like every female is a fag hag. (A whole lot of males, too, come to think of it.)

I’ve heard women say things like, “I think that’s so cute!”

Let two males, behaving as if one were female, walk into a large group of women and listen to the collective “Awwwwwwww!” erupt as if scripted. You get the same thing in movie audiences after carefully manipulative homo-erotic scenes.

Once in the Bahamas, watching some comedy/musical/variety show put on by the resort staff, actors and actresses came out in various costumes, impersonationg different famous celebrities. The audience was international (though mostly from western nations) and the thespians were attractive. That seemed to be a requirement. There was very little applause for the hot babes–maybe because the men present had brought their dates, as I had. There was mildly enthusiastic applause from the gathered women for the bare-chested beefcake. But when one of the male actors appeared in drag, the hooting, cheering and applause was thunderous by comparison.

On another date a few years later, I watched a belly dancing demonstration. When it was over, the dancer instructed some kids how to dance and their parents all laughed and clapped. But after that she asked the crowd if they’d like to see a guy dressed in the costume and forced to dance. The question was asked like she already knew the answer, based on experience with other crowds. And sure enough, the crowd cheered its approval and some poor mangina was singled out to humiliate himself in front of everybody.

It’s all enough to make a man wonder: Is the same psychological compulsion driving women to invade male turf and ruin it also driving their collective desire to see men feminized (whether it be literally or superficially)?

Mangina Melodies: “El Paso” by Marty Robbins

I’ve never liked country music, but there’s an old forgotten genre that most people mistake for country, and I like listening to it now and then. It’s mostly old cowboy ballads, from artists like the Sons of the Pioneers, Gene Autry, Tex Ritter…and the western swing of Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys. If I’m writing a western, sometimes these songs help me keep the right mindset.

I call it “western music,” figuring maybe it’s what mixed in with the mama-died-on-Christmas stuff to form “country & western.” However you classify it, I liked it enough to compile a CD, which one family member liked so much, I’ve recently fulfilled a request for another.

You can listen to a song for years, and even sing along with it, without really considering the lyrics. At least I have. Such is the case with “El Paso” by Marty Robbins, a cowboy ballad with beautiful Tex-Mex guitar accompaniment. Only on my last listen did I really think about the story the song tells.

Here’s the gist of it as crooned by Robbins:

A cowboy has a raging case of one-itus for a Mexican bar girl who sounds like an eight or nine. He’s convinced she’s a special snowflake and he’s partially right: she is flaky. Obviously she’s still riding the carousel because one night he catches her all up on the juevos of a “wild young cowboy.”

Our hero confronts the pick up artist in a jealous rage, and the cowboy goes for his gun. But the narrator is quick on the draw and shoots him dead. Now, knowing he’ll be hanged for murder, he makes a run for it, and holes up in the badlands of New Mexico.

But the boy’s got it bad. By “it” I mean codependent disorder or something, ’cause he just can’t bear being separated from Felina any longer (probably haunted by visions of her on the carousel) and rides back for El Paso.

He knows he’s a wanted man, so this decision was stupid enough. But maybe he thinks they might not be looking for him to return. That notion is put to rest when he’s intercepted by a posse shouting and shooting…and yet he keeps riding for the saloon! Clearly he’s delusional or just plumb loco.

One of the posse scores a hit, but he’s just gotta make it to Rose’s Cantina, so he plunges onward into the hail of lead.

Why, you idiot?

Sure enough, somebody in the posse scores a center-mass hit. The bullet goes deep in his chest. The dumbass dies right there outside Rose’s cantina…but at least he gets a kiss goodbye on the cheek from the slut Felina as his soul floats away to the last round-up.

This song was a tremendous hit back in the day, from what I’ve been told.  Yech. The Ballad of a Blue Pill Beta is what this should be called.

By 1959 when this song debuted, the cowboy was the icon of American masculinity. Young boys used to play “cowboys & Indians.” Back then about half the programming on TV was made up of westerns. Even inner city black kids with no interest in history and no appreciation for the great outdoors dreamed of playing football for the team with a cowboy as its mascot.

Was this song instrumental in toppling the icon? Did Marty Robbins’ artsy-fartsy ballad push the he-man symbol of rugged individualism off the alpha pinnacle of devil-may-care masculinity and send him tumbling down (with the tumbleweeds) the slippery slope of feminized pop culture, to finally land, decades later, at the foot of Brokeback Mountain?

The hero of this ballad should have nexted Felina and gamed a quality senorita from a nearby hacienda to cook him frijoles and squeeze out little vaqueros while he built his spread into a cattle empire.

Now there’s a ballad worthy of the music, and lyrics worth singing.

Battle of the Sexes: One Way Women are Beating Men

With a culture and governmental structure biased against men and favoring women, you’d think western men would do everything possible to minimize our disadvantages. Strangely, there’s at least one way even a lot of red pill men (or at least red pill candidates) are working against themselves.

There seems to be plenty of self-help info out in the manosphere, ranging from physical fitness to psychological coaching and even wardrobe advice–all aimed at fostering self-improvement.

What I’m about to share comes from statistics, which means I’ll be speaking in generalities. If you’re an exception, then that’s great.

The disadvantage has been there for quite a while, but it’s become much worse over the last 20-25 years.

To put it simply: men watch TV instead of reading.

Forget about the socio-sexual hierarchy for a moment; I’m going to introduce a whole different use for prefixes like “alpha” and “beta.” These describe two different states your brain can be in. In the beta mode, your mind is active–you generate ideas; you analyze critically; you solve problems; your imagination exercises. The theta mode takes over your brain during REM sleep or, with some people, meditation, and only your subconscious is active. During the delta phase your brain rests, and your body heals.

Then there is the alpha phase, in which your mind is most receptive to outside influence, “optimal for programming” according to scientists. In other words: at your most vulnerable to suggestion. It is literally a trance state–a necessary segue into hypnosis which hypnotherapists are trained to induce. And audio-visual stimulus can get most people there in a matter of seconds.

I used the phrase “audio-visual stimulus” to include movies, videos, and anything you can watch on television. Hours of Facebook, Twitter and other types of internet surfing can get you there, too, but not as quickly.

Reading, however, puts your brain in the beta mode. Your mind stays sharp; critical reasoning is often strengthened; imagination gets exercise.

While America is dumbed-down to greater and greater degrees across all demographics, women are still much more likely to read voluntarily, after high school, than men. This has a lot to do with the indocrination industry educational component of our feminized culture. Public schools are designed to teach girls, and boys don’t learn the same ways. The less a boy gets out of the female-biased teaching methods, the worse a student he is and the more the system tries to force him to learn like a girl. Reading seems like just another form of torture to him and by the time he graduates, he’ll avoid it if at all possible.

If you want to hide something from the average public-educated male, put it in a book.

Have you noticed how many white nights and manginas there are in the male population? Not just among the couch potatoes and geeks, but even among alpha dogs at the top of their chosen fields in business, sports or the military, etc. And political persuasion makes little difference! There seem to be just as many feminista males on the right as the left.

Joe Blow was a poor student, so public schools may not have been able to feminize him to the degree they wanted to. But he came home every day and sat in front of the idiot box, and with his guard down in the Entertain Me mode (alpha/trance) the thought cops went to work on him.

Joe Blow may have had differing levels of resistance to different types of conditioning, which is why there are plenty of white knight manginas who lean “conservative” (whatever that means) and notice catch the media in some of its deception. But it’s going to be nearly impossible to make him swallow the red pill when it comes to the female of the species. You can’t compete with three-to-five hours a day of conditioning during a trance state (plus what his mother likely taught him). That conditioning hasn’t been challenged in his entire life.

Was it hard for you to get over your one-itus or other cultural programming? Is some of it still difficult? Like uprooting a tree that’s been carefully nurtured over the course of years or decades?

Is your critical reasoning not as sharp as you wish it were? Does problem solving not come as easily as you think it should? Do you have a lack of imagination impairing you from advancing at your job?

The way you’ve been choosing to inform and entertain yourself could have a lot to do with it.