The Way of the Superior Man

Goddammit, I despise this book, myself for having bought it, and all the new-age esoteric stupid misogyny bullshit that it represents. I hope I learned NOTHING from this book, and I'm glad I read it while single before eventually finding the person I would marry.

If you're convinced by this dichotomous perception of reality and people, and somehow need a black-and-white representation of the ridiculously complex network of interpersonal behaviors that compose a relationship between 2 adults, you might a) not be an adult, or b) need a lot of therapy.

Regardless of your above situation, don't buy this book.

This felt like a collection of blog posts in some way, not as coherent throughout as I would have liked. It's also a bit light on practices you can engage in to transform yourself. It does have some interesting philosophical ideas about the roles of masculinity and femininity in life which I enjoyed thinking about. A couple of things that really stuck out and I will have to think about them over time:

- Women will challenge you, cause chaos and disrupt because it is their nature. They are testing their partner to determine if they are not fit for the world. If a feminine partner can disrupt the masculine partners tranquility, the world will easily do the same and they are not fit.

- Part of the challenging will come in the form of complaints. While these complaints are signals that the f partner detects a weakness and is testing that weakness, the actual content of the complaint is meaningless. That is, if a f partner complains that you always leave your clothes laying around the room, actually examining the facts to determine if this is true is pointless. Only the signal that they detect weakness and are probing it is meaningful.

There were some other things too, I find the book overall a light on spiritual enlightenment but I do think that there are differences between masculine and feminine people in how they see the world and relate to others that does need to be examined and talked about. So I liked it for that.

Pretty Amazing book, I learned a lot about the feminine nature, masculine nature, purpose, love, responsibilities as a man, what to expect from a woman & most importantly. How you should pursue life as a man. It got repetitive near the ends, but that wasn't a big problem.

UPDATED REVIEW, 2023.

This book is fucking mind poison. On my second read through, I couldn't tell if it was good advice presented poorly, or bad advice presented well. Turns out its the latter. Lots of bad advice caged in new-age wisdom, that makes claims without ever being unfalsifiable. Stuff like, “do X and she will love it. And if she doesn't, it's because you didn't do X with enough love.”

Stay clear of this one. It might be OK if you're a single man, but in a happy, loving relationship, it can only bring pain and suffering.

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ORIGINAL REVIEW, 2018. Originally 4 stars.

This is a hard book to review. It's got some fantastic advice in it, and also has a lot of shit. Some of the great stuff is about making moves in the world even if you're not super sure where you're going, being confident in your relationships and striving to be true to your purpose above all else.

And then it gets to the “women” portion. The Way of the Superior Man comes off as a book written by a guy who has never once been in a healthy relationship; it's full of advice like “if you come too quickly, your woman won't respect you and will attempt to undermine you at every turn” and “if she doesn't sound happy about your accomplishments, it's because she's testing you to see if you give a shit what she thinks.” This is some dark red pill shit dressed up in language about love and “her positive feminine energy.” Nah, Deida, just stop dating terrible humans and things will be alright.

Rating this a 4/5 because of it's good advice for taking care of yourself; skim the stuff about women.