“A man should take responsibility for his actions” is an often-heard maxim that rings true. It is a decree that a mature red pill man should live up to, though one that often comes up in difficult times of failure and hardship. If a man shies from his responsibility he can be considered a coward, and is often judged as one. But how far does our responsibility reach? What are the things in our life and the world we live in that we should be responsible for?
In our modern society legislation and tradition give us freedoms and responsibilities. There are never-ending lists of things that we do or have not done that we can be held responsible for. However, I am going to leave those to the lawyers and discuss the idea of responsibility by using the one thing we all want in our life, happiness, as a framework. And most importantly I’m going to discuss the limits of a man’s responsibility in terms of his own and other people’s happiness.
Let us consider these two sentences:
“Egoistic, Selfish, Narcissistic and Self-centered are words used to describe a person who does not care about other people and only thinks of himself.”
“Egoistic, Selfish, Narcissistic and Self-centered are words used to describe a person who puts his own happiness before other people.”
Notice the importance in the wording of the latter sentence: “A person who puts his own happiness before other people”
In truth, every red piller should put their own happiness before other people. The reason for this is that you yourself are the only person of whose happiness you are fully responsible for. If you take on the responsibility of other people’s happiness, especially women’s happiness, you will lead an unhappy life no matter how happy everyone else around you is. You might even have a successful career with a good income, a family, a house and kids. In other words, you might have the whole American dream but you yourself will be unhappy if your own happiness is not your prime priority. The Golden Rule does not apply in the real world. If you maximize and prioritize the happiness of others, they will never fully reciprocate.
Despite emphasizing the importance of focusing on one’s own happiness, I believe that a life that gives the greatest fulfillment is one in which your life’s mission benefits mankind. It is not simply a naïve quest, but a noble goal and one that should be pursued. A man should have a fulfilling mission, ideally one that benefits the cause he believes in and improves the quality of life and happiness of other people. Despite the nature of the noble cause, he must remember that he is not responsible for the happiness of others.
Think of what many of the writers in here are doing. Publishing books on self-development and masculinity is a noble cause, and many of them do it even without a product to sell. You do not need to be a cancer-fighting Ph.D to have a mission that is benefiting humanity. Still, no matter how noble his cause, if others accuse the man with a noble mission of not putting more effort in helping others, even if he has the means, he must not sacrifice his own plans for others if it does not increase his own fulfillment.
Therefore:
A man should lead a life that increases the quality of life and happiness of as many people as possible, but he can, and should, only be responsible for his own happiness
There is one exception to this rule. Offspring. Until their adulthood, a man as a father is responsible for the well-being and happiness of his children, and he is hopefully sharing the burden of responsibility with a loyal wife. But a time comes when this responsibility, too, ends. For children must eventually be responsible for their own lives.
When making decisions in life a man should aim for an increase in his own happiness and in the fulfillment of his own mission. Companions and advisers in these decision-making situations include your gut, your moral code, and your intellect. Listen to all three and ignore none. While you must prioritize yourself, remember that a never-ending indulgence of selfish desires usually leads to a purely hedonistic life devoid of true happiness.
Remember the quotation in the beginning. Take responsibility for your own life and actions, and remember that taking responsibility of yourself requires giving up responsibility on others. The ultimate form of narcissism is martyrdom in which a person sacrifices himself for everyone else and then complains why no one helps him. As the Greeks put it, “Gods help those, who help themselves.” Live your life to yourself and focus on your mission. Then suddenly others will help you—because by helping you will they help themselves, as they too are living their lives for themselves.
Read More: The Limits Of American Feminism
