Imagine stepping into a century-old Hall of Ancestors with your cousins, the air thick with history and quiet reverence. Sunlight streams through arched windows, casting golden glows on rows of marble busts and bronze statues, your great-great-grandparents, aunts, uncles, and forebears from generations past. Their faces, captured in eternal stone and metal, smile down at you with knowing eyes, as if whispering secrets of resilience and triumph across the years. You realize these weren't just names in a family tree; they were real people who lived boldly, farmers who tamed wild lands, inventors who sparked revolutions, mothers who nurtured dreams through hardships, warriors who fought for freedom. They cared so deeply about the future that they left behind these tangible records: portraits that speak volumes without words, inscriptions of their deeds, artifacts from their lives. It's a bridge across time, a testament that says, "We were here, we struggled and soared, and now it's your turn." As you stand there, you spot familiar echoes in their faces, your grandmother's determined jaw in yours, your cousin's mischievous grin mirrored in a long-lost uncle. It's like seeing fragments of yourself woven into this grand tapestry, reminding you that you're not alone; you're the continuation of a story that's still unfolding. How could you not feel inspired? That rush of motivation to seize every moment, to build something lasting, to live with purpose so that one day, your own likeness joins them, smiling down at the next generation, urging them onward. In a world of fleeting digital memories, what if we all created something enduring like this? Who's with me in honoring our roots and forging legacies that inspire?

When I was about ten years old, my dad bought an antique motorboat. It was not a big boat, maybe eighteen feet long, wooden, with a decrepit old Johnson outboard motor. I do not think there was anything fundamentally wrong with the motor, but those old engines are finicky. One of the first days we took it out, the weather was perfect. Sunny, warm, almost no wind. We were out exploring islands in Georgian Bay. On the way back, the engine suddenly stalled for no apparent reason. We still had plenty of fuel, well over half a tank. My dad could not get it started. We stopped for a moment to think about what to do. We had paddles and could paddle back, but it would have taken hours. As we were thinking, we noticed a massive storm brewing in the distance. It looked far away, like it was still hours off. Unfortunately, it was not. Within half an hour, the rain started. Around that time, we saw a newer motorboat heading toward us, coming from the direction of the storm. If you kept going the way they were headed, you would reach the docks where we were going. If I remember correctly, it was someone we knew. They slowed down beside us and said we had two seconds to decide. Either jump in with them and abandon our boat, or stay behind. A terrible storm was coming. My dad thought about it and said no. He believed he could get the motor restarted. The other boat took off at full speed toward shore, and we went back to trying to start the engine. Pull after pull, it would not start. It was not flooded. It had fuel. Everything looked right. We had no idea why it refused to run. Then a massive waterspout formed behind us, right at the edge of the storm. It was maybe five or six hundred feet away, about two football fields. It made a horrible sound as it sucked water up from the lake. It looked like something out of a movie. Then the rain came hard. It was not just water. Small fish were coming down in the rain, sucked up from the lake and falling back down on us. Finally, my dad got the engine started. The boat was not fast to begin with, but he pushed it as hard as it would go, partly because higher throttle made it less likely to stall again. We headed straight for shore. As we ran for the docks, the storm and the waterspout followed behind us, getting closer and closer. We came into the docks at full speed, which you are not supposed to do. We jumped out, tied the boat, and ran. By the time we reached the docks, the waterspout was maybe a hundred feet behind us. I had a lot of adventures as a kid. Many of the most dangerous ones were on the water. Freshwater lakes, especially Canadian lakes, are incredibly treacherous. They are cold. You can have a beautiful sunny day and an hour later face a storm of the century. When the waves come, they do not roll like ocean waves. They come close together and relentlessly pound whatever they hit. At the same time, it is some of the most beautiful country God ever made. Clear water. That day, the water was so clear we saw a massive bass, the biggest I have ever seen, about thirty feet down. You could see every scale on its body at that depth. The water was as clear as glass. I suppose the point of the story is this. I take risks in order to enjoy life. And when you take enough real risks as a child, you become more resistant to unnecessary fear responses as an adult. (The boat in the image is very close to what we had.)

Do you ever feel like a rubber band that’s been stretched too far? Do you ever feel overworked and lazy at the same time? Do you find yourself exhausted, yet still judging yourself for not doing enough? If so, there’s a good chance you’re a high‑conscientiousness person. View article →

One of the clearest indicators of a dysfunctional marriage is not the presence of conflict, but the absence of a workable method for resolving it. Conflict is inevitable in any marriage. What determines stability is whether disagreements can be processed productively rather than allowed to accumulate. Couples with even very serious problems, money, sex, extended family, parenting, can remain highly stable if they have a reliable way to resolve conflict. Over time, issues get addressed, renegotiated, or adapted to, and alignment is restored. By contrast, couples who begin highly aligned but lack conflict-resolution capacity tend to deteriorate. Each unresolved disagreement adds friction; resentment accumulates; communication degrades; and eventually the couple deviates so far from one another that the marriage breaks down. This is why, in practice, no substantive marital issue can be solved before conflict resolution is solved. Chores, finances, and life logistics are unsolvable if a couple cannot even have a structured disagreement without escalation or withdrawal. Until conflict becomes productive, every problem threatens the relationship itself rather than contributing to its improvement.

A lot of what we are calling 'mental health issues' are immaturity issues that society has pathologized for profit.

Far too many men end up as servants in their own household. Life is far too short to spend it being your wife's houseboy.

My wife and I went out to dinner. We came home, sent the babysitter off, and my youngest boy, Henry, walks up to me: “Daddy!” He hugs me and presses his face so hard against mine to kiss me. He confuses the strength of his hug and kiss with how intensely he feels about you, so he presses so hard it hurts, because he is just so happy we returned. He is clapping his hands, jumping up and down, absolutely thrilled. His brother, on the other hand, did not say much, he has a flu, half-awake and half-asleep. But Henry always makes you feel so happy to come home.

Almost every marriage that's on the rocks could be saved if the couple would just have more and better sex. As little as 2x or 3x a week would restore the relationship.

“I feel like I never get a break. The cooking, the cleaning, the laundry, the kids needing something every minute, it never ends. I am always on duty, and no one sees how constant it is.” “I am tired of carrying everything for the family. Working long hours, paying every bill, fixing what breaks, keeping the house and yard in shape, handling the decisions and the pressure, it is relentless. I wake up knowing there is always another task waiting.” Women often express frustration about the repetitive nature of child care and domestic work, just as some men express frustration about the constant demands of providing, protecting, and leading. Both sets of complaints treat the cyclical nature of these roles as if repetition itself were a flaw. A healthier framing is that these responsibilities are privileges, not burdens. They are the core expressions of being a wife, a husband, a mother, or a father. Parenting is not endless. The period in which children need us daily is brief. They grow, they become independent, and the direct responsibilities fade far sooner than most people expect. The very tasks that feel monotonous are part of a short, irreplaceable window in which parents have maximum influence. To resent that window is to misunderstand its value. Far better to treasure it while it exists. Similarly, the care spouses provide to one another is not unilateral sacrifice. It is reciprocal exchange based on comparative strengths. Each person gives what he or she is naturally better at giving and receives what is needed in return. When understood properly, that exchange is not a drain but a source of stability, intimacy, and cooperation. The problem is not the work itself but the framing. Treating repeating duties as “endless drudgery” blinds people to the meaning embedded in them. Seeing those duties as privileges clarifies their purpose: a chance to build a family, support a spouse, shape children, and create continuity. The work repeats, but it does not imprison; it enriches us.

"Why can groups of masculine men cooperate and form effective teams far easier than effeminate men, women or mixed groups?" - Question from a reader. Revoy’s Law: “Given sufficient time, truthful feedback from reality, and personal responsibility for consequences, honest masculine men will tend to converge on the same general conclusions about reality and the institutional conditions for sustainable human cooperation, regardless of their initial beliefs.” Revoy’s Corollary: “Under survival pressure, disparate men converge rapidly on masculine norms of hierarchy, enforcement, and direct coordination, because these are the only strategies that minimize death and maximize group success.” Short version: “Under threat, reality and responsibility, honest men converge.”

I was seventeen. At a dance. I met a girl with very short hair. Otherwise she was stunning. Black hair. Crystal blue eyes. Very light skin. French. I asked her to dance. Half way through the song I asked why her hair was so short. She said, I am going to die in six months or so. It did not click at first. She looked healthy. I did not understand what that had to do with her hair. We kept dancing. Over and over. I think two thirds of my dances that night were with her. I enjoyed her company. She was charming. Soft. Gentle. Beautiful. Kind. Sweet. French Canadian. There was a small language barrier. It did not matter. Her warmth came through. I met a few of her friends that night. I kept in touch with them for a couple of years. She had told the truth. She died a little over a year later. Cancer. Her hair was short because she had been through chemo. She was in that in-between period. Recovering. A little hair had grown back. I think about her from time to time, grateful for the few moments we enjoyed together. As hard as life can feel, we are still alive. She could have sat in sorrow complaining about her life. Instead, she chose a night with friends. A fancy dress party. Dancing. Being sweet. Being herself. She faced death with a stoic calm that puts many men to shame. She spoke of it as if it were nothing. No big deal. There is a lesson in that. It is hard to enjoy life if you focus on complaints. No matter how bad it gets, choose time with loved ones. Choose small joys. Choose what matters. Do that, and you will not only enjoy your life. However short it is, it will mean something.

>Write a clear thesis. Give it to the LLM. >Command it to clarify and steelman your claim. >Then command it to critique the claim. >Repeat the cycle until the idea survives attack. You will obtain the best results when you restrict the LLM to a defined grammar, domain, and standard of judgment.

When People Lack Skill, They Mistake Causality for Luck Many people assume outcomes are governed by luck because their understanding, skill, and capacity are too limited to perceive the causal forces at work. When we cannot see the steps and principles governing life, we imagine it is largely up to chance. Every domain has an underlying structure. Experts navigate that structure intentionally, applying knowledge, judgment, and timing to get the results they want. Novices, unable to detect those patterns, watch the same actions and interpret them as luck or fortune. This is a feature of human cognition: low competence reduces our resolution of causal detail. When the details become a blur, events feel unpredictable. We label that uncertainty as "luck" because it is the easiest explanation. The more skill we build, the more we see how outcomes emerge from choices, habits, preparation, and discipline. What once looked like chance becomes transparent, understandable. What once felt arbitrary now becomes controllable. When skill replaces superstition. Understanding replaces luck and capability replaces guesswork. People who cultivate mastery do not rely on luck. At the same time, we must acknowledge that chance is real. Life contains uncertainty, and not every variable is under our command. But the more we believe that our decisions matter, and the more capable we become at making and executing on those decisions, the more we expand the sphere of our control. Agency is the ability to turn our intentions into outcomes of our choosing. In difficult environments, where threats are high and opportunities scarce, only those with highly developed agency can consistently move forward. When life is hard, it is not luck that separates people. It is the degree of control they cultivate over themselves and their choices. I will teach you how to develop your agency.

This is what I call a spirtually gay marriage. This dude wants another dude to split his bills with and not a wife to have children and start a family with. He missed the whole point of marriage. Married men, do not treat you wife like she is a man.

Most men today are less successful than they could be. The cause is not primarily the external decay of the world around them. It is largly internal and institutional. Most young men today are not part of anything. They are rootless, unaffiliated, and invisible to the networks that create opportunity, accountability, and trust. A man without a brotherhood cannot scale his value. Alone, he bears all risk and receives none of the compound benefits that group affiliation produces. Clouds of unaffiliated, disconnected, underperforming men lead to the types of societies we see today. I believe that situation is responsible for the recent decay in civilization, and the narrowing opportunities that young men face are the result of this disconnection. Throughout history, men inherited their fathers’ memberships, guilds, churches, fraternities, regiments. Those memberships transmitted reputation, skills, and alliances. They disciplined behavior and elevated the average man into a functional hierarchy of responsibility. Modern men, cut off from those structures, attempt to compete as atomized individuals in a system designed for coordinated tribes. The result is predictable: instability, resentment, and loss of agency. This is especially true among white men who have been conditioned to believe that they are not allowed to form fraternal groups, and that associating with members of their own tribe or heritage is immoral. Power in any civilization flows through networks. It circulates within the nodes that generate value, trust, and coordination. Any organization of lasting power must direct its energy to the nodes that yield the greatest return. Therefore, if a man is not part of a network, no power flows to him; he cannot invest, multiply, or influence. If he is part of a network, the more effectively he amplifies its strength, the more power he receives in return. This principle is amoral. The morality of power can be discussed only by those who possess it. Those without it, detached from any cooperative structure, lack the context to judge power competently, because its operation is foreign to them. This is why the Modern Minuteman movement exists. @bierlingm, myself and others are reviving the ancient logic of the Mannerbund in contemporary form: small, peer-based groups of men who train, cooperate, and build together for mutual benefit. Not militias in the narrow sense, but brotherhoods dedicated to discipline, production, and reciprocal insurance. A Minuteman group restores visibility, restores belonging, and restores the feedback loop that produces competence and trust in men. The corollary for women is equally clear. Women do not require groups to attract men, but to protect and guide them in choosing among men. A female network, family, congregation, or sisterhood, exists to filter, vet, and shield against unworthy or dangerous suitors. Without such a circle, women face an unregulated market of false signals and manipulation. Female institutions historically existed to prevent this. Their absence today exposes women to psychological and social harm. A civilization endures when men are bound by brotherhoods that discipline them and women are supported by sisterhoods that protect them. The man without a brotherhood becomes unstable. The woman without a sisterhood becomes vulnerable. The society without both becomes infertile. Join us at:

Moritz Bierling

I help people and institutions act coherently in a complex world.

Use my code: REVOY

Avoid hardening your woman Facing suffering, hardship, tests, trials, violence, and struggles makes us men more masculine and tough. We grow up and get better by doing hard things. Women are not like us. They are not meant to face the harshness of the world. Both men and women grow up to maturity through taking on responsibilities. However, the optimal set of responsibilities that causes a man to grow up and the set that causes a woman to grow up are different. Women mature by carefully guarding their value from damage or erosion. Protecting the fragile nature of femininity and learning to transmute the raw value men provide into even more valuable things (a house into home, food into a mean, sperm into a baby, etc.). Women have three times the touch sensors in their thinner, softer skin. Their bones are more fragile, they have less muscle mass, and their more sensitive CNS can't take the same stimulation as ours. They need more sleep than we do. Estrogen causes emotional rollercoasters. Women are the "weaker vessel." Almost every young woman is feminine. It's in their nature. But a harsh life, a lack of fatherly protection, fending off attention from low-value men, battling with men in the workplace, or facing the same challenges that make a man better will beat that lovely softness out of her. We are not the same. Masculine men want a sweet, soft, feminine woman. But you can't have that if you assign her a role in the family that overburdens her and causes her to be in a masculine frame for hours a day, leaving her exhausted. Women are capable of being very tough, but the cost or doing that is giving up their femininity. Yes, it's not fair. Your woman needs better treatment than you do. Just as your children need even better treatment than she does. If that bothers you, marriage, women, and children are not for you. None of this is about providing her with luxury. Women don't need luxury to be feminine and its likely to be harmful to them and your children in the long term. You also don't need to spend large amounts of money to care for her. Money can help, and outsourcing support for your wife is a viable solution when you lack a supportive extended family. For example I have hired a full-time maid for my wife for several years now. Giving your wife good treatment is about how you interact with her and the world you create for her. Are you a source of leadership, authority, protection, comfort, strength, and support for your wife? Do you help her when she is overwhelmed? That's the way to care for a woman. Both men and women thrive when we have a cognitive load to carry, but the optimal load tends to differ. While there is overlap, women do best when they are busy, loaded up, and responsible for things that appeal to women and are suited to their strengths, feminine things. Let her be busy with the useful things she is best suited for. If you are a woman reading this, please pay attention to the men you date and their attitudes about taking care of their women and eventual children. If you need help evaluating a man, DM me with the details, and I will give you expert advice.

Do any of you have a Ledger discount or affiliate code?

It's ok if someone doesn't like you.

My son came to me and said, “I deleted my video games.” I asked why. He said, “I’m sick of them. They feel like a waste of time.” So I asked, “Describe that feeling.” Because I want him to feel it, to anchor that dissatisfaction deep into his bones. To make it part of who he is. He said, “It just feels like I’m not building anything that lasts. Like nothing is real.” And I told him, “You’re right. It’s not real. That’s the truth of it. Video games give you the illusion of adventure, of utility, of meaning, but none of it lasts. None of it’s real.” He said, “I should use my time for something more productive. I could make something. Do something.” I nodded. “Yes.” Then he said, “I feel kind of sad that I wasted so much time.” I said, “That sadness is normal. It’s the emptiness that comes from not producing anything. You’re becoming a man now, and men can’t feel fulfilled unless they’re building something real. Creating. Contributing. Producing value. That’s your soul calling out for purpose. Same as hunger or thirst.” "What do I do about it?" he asked. I told him, “Once you get back to painting, sculpting, writing, back to school, back to building your life, that emptiness will go away. You’ll feel useful again. You’ll feel alive again.” He thanked me for listening to him. And now he’s adjusting. No more games. Back to reality. Back to meaning. He is currently on the treadmill getting some exercise.

One of my twins (5 years old), Alex, has a habit, he likes to eat apples two at a time. One in each hand. He alternates bites, back and forth, like it is a coordinated performance. But I discourage it, because sometimes he does not finish them. Wasteful habit. This morning, I handed out apples. One for Henry, one for Alex. A minute later, I sit down, glance back, and there’s Alex, desperately trying to take Henry’s apple. Henry, completely unbothered, just smiles and resists. He’s lying on his back, using his feet to push Alex away, like they are doing slow-motion Brazilian jiu-jitsu. No anger, no panic, just calm resistance. But Alex is getting frustrated. I can see the moment coming, teeth and nails if I do not step in. So I get up, separate them, scoop Alex into my lap, help him regulate his emotions. I ask what’s going on, though I already know. He wants two apples. Not one. Two. He insists: “I need two!” I laugh. Hold him gently. He’s stormy, but softens quickly when held. Then, without drama, Henry finishes his apple, all the way to the core, and hands it to Alex. And Alex beams. He now has two apples. One fresh, one gnawed to the center. That’s all he needed. It’s funny, he does this often. Two apples. Or an apple and a banana. Or two bananas. Always food in each hand. Like symmetry makes it taste better.