I’ve seen a discussion repeated several times online.
It goes like this:
Young Wimps: Boo hoo, we never get matches, not allowed to approach any more, can’t buy a house, everything sucks, wanna rope.
Old Farts: Why not go on an adventure? Start a banana farm in the Amazon or something. What have you got to lose?
YW: Boo hoo, we’ll get dengue fever, plus why should we? This is our home; honor, etc.
OF: But weren’t you just saying your future was hopeless and your life wasn’t worth living?
YW: We don’t have any money to travel anyway.
OF: Traveling with heaps of money isn’t an adventure.
YW: Well what about if we have a medical condition or family or something?
Etcetera.
Here are some examples, though I understand that you can’t click to read whole threads now unless you’re on X:
Once should note that these days, women travel more than men.
Yes, they’re mostly going to soft European destinations and taking pictures of themselves with a cute open mouth and a piece of paella on the end of a fork. However, it’s a worry that a lot of young men aren’t even doing that.
Some responses:
Sounds like an American pondering an adventurous weekend away in Toronto.
What? People are friendly almost everywhere so long as you are respectful. Even cultures hostile to foreigners usually hide it behind politeness (Japan, Eritrea).
This sounds like a young guy bringing his own insecurities into his world view (as he has no life experience to illustrate it).
Another frequent response is that every destination is now too touristy, which is absurd if you are the slightest bit intrepid. Go to a random, non-famous location in Japan and you’ll be the only gaijin in the village.
Anyway, what are we to make of all this?
First, I’m obviously with the Old Farts on this one (I am an old fart).
If your life has not been developing as you hoped despite your best efforts, it makes sense to roll the dice and try something completely different. A new job, a new city, a new country. Even a new haircut and shirt. This is the ctrl-alt-del of a man’s life; the forced shutdown of all applications and complete reboot.
It might work, it might not. Doing the same old things, on the other hand, will certainly deliver the same old results.
This is what our ancestors did many times over, and they managed it without Skype and JetStar.
Even if their lives aren’t in the doldrums, I highly recommend young men go on an adventure. Otherwise you might find yourself tied down in middle age, always wondering what might have been.
Before you put down roots or take on responsibilities, get out there and see what might be.
I define ‘adventure’ as a trip longer than three months which goes beyond the Instagramable. Ideally you would live and work overseas for several years. I suppose the adventure could be in your own country but in that case it would have to be pretty epic.
Most roamers eventually return, wiser and more worldly, with a renewed and durable appreciation for their homeland.
A few end up staying abroad because they knock up a chick.
Some catch the bug and are be cursed to become the Wandering Dude.
A more important point is: what’s wrong with young men? Why are so many of the most troubled among them also the most hesitant to take a risk? What do they have to lose?
I remember the week in my 20s when my life fell apart. Even while the rumble of collapsed stone columns still echoed, I made the decision to pack up and leave. Six months later, I did.
Why don’t troubled young men Heathcliff it off to the East Indies or the French Foreign Legion anymore?
They are afraid.
One young commenter complained something like, ‘Why don’t you actually think about why we lack confidence?’
Okay, let’s think about that.
From a young age, women are pummeled with the message that they can do anything and you go girl. Men are instead hit with accusations of monstrousness for asking out a girl or for not being inclusive. Women’s confidence is pumped up high; probably too high (traveling solo around Pakistan, for example). Men’s confidence in the loser group is at rock bottom.
I understand that. However, isn’t that just more reason to get out?
I always thought that running away from my problems was a coward’s way out, and felt a bit ashamed of this habit, but just sitting there doing nothing is surely worse.
I’m not convinced that our raising of boys is the totality of the problem. It used to be that men’s greed, lust and desire for glory would compel them across the seas. These impulses seem greatly weakened today.
Why? Diet? Computer games/pornography? Hormones in the water? Lack of exercise? A bit of all of these?
No one knows.
In any case, this malaise robs young men of agency. They can’t think for themselves where they might go, how they might get there, or what they might do once they arrive. They can’t problem-solve the obstacles, only find fault in any specific proposal.
The Amazon, you say? Sure, and get kidnapped by a cartel.
South East Asia? Right, and get stabbed in my sleep by a ladyboy.
Get a job overseas? Where would I even start doing that in my industry/with my training and education?
Study abroad? Okay Boomer; only girls with rich Chad boyfriends paying for them get to do that.
On and on it goes.
The only way to get yourself on an adventure is to seize the day and do it. You can’t baby someone through the process because they won’t overcome each obstacle unless they’re serious about it.
By the same token, they would need to work their way through various difficulties upon arrival (which is the point). If you just dumped them there, they’d flounder. One is reminded of how what’s-his-name, the incel shooter, spent time in Morocco. He didn’t seem to do much except hang out with his cousin, and he threw a tantrum to avoid going back there.
I’ve seen various cases like that, with both men and women. They find themselves in a strange place and dare not leave their room, instead staying glued to the screen. The idea of figuring out how to take a bus sounds to them like figuring out how to build a rocket ship.
I knew one guy who was a success story. A complete mummy’s boy, he went through several tangents and ended up living independently in a new city with an intelligence-adjacent job. The break from home made him – he’s now married with two kids and has a much healthier relationship with his mother.
On the other hand, he did start out with a very high-paying job that he’d had from a young age and is very smart.
The less successful kind of men described here are right about their fears, in a way. They wouldn’t survive overseas. They’re barely managing at their mum’s place.
They would need a series of stepping stones to get them to the adventuring stage. These might be intermediate goals like obtaining a drivers’ license, getting a job, saving money, regularly going out for some activity, making a couple of friends.
Until you can manage those things, you won’t be able to get abroad, let alone thrive in a new environment.
Have you seen any examples of a back-home loser bloom in a new situation? Any failures? Or a mysterious third thing?
A manly travel song for inspiration:
SovietMen 
Old guy here. I’ve travelled a bit, almost by accident. Apart from a week in Dubai, nowhere very exotic. The real adventure of my life: getting married, staying married, and raising a bunch of kids.
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The website Only In Your State is a single man’s best friend.
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The mountain west is gorgeous and I do miss the scent of pine and fir.
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Very important post and close to the bone for me.
I was a wimp until my mid 20s. I missed the typical long-term travel opportunity before/after university. The excuses you’ve quoted made me cringe because most of them came out of my own mouth.
I’ve had a reasonably exciting life and I’m perfectly happy, but not doing some 3 month stupid trip is definitely a regret I’ll carry
By my mid 20s my career was rolling and I had other (equally false) excuses for not adventuring.
I’ve become more adventurous as I got older with shorter adventures (read the story on my blog called Clouds Over Addis Ababa for true account of an 8,000 mile first date I went on). And I’m de facto married to a woman from a minor South East Asian city and as a result I’ve stayed in places for some time where I am the only Bule.
But it ain’t the same.
Any wimps reading this, just f-ing do it, kiddo.
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Maybe it is the ever shrinking family size which keeps especially mothers overprotective of their kids/sons and doesn’t let them go out on adventures. With seven kids, you’re willing to encourage them to get the heck out of the house asap. With only one, you’re more likely to cling to it and helicopter it. The same mothers then complain about their very boring husband, who never does anything exciting.
Anyway, I subscribe to the premise of this article. Another very big advantage of traveling long term is, that you will be confronted with the ‘scum of the earth’, scammers, thieves, shamelessly corrupt bureaucrats and police, etc.pp. Your pattern recognition of evaluating who the good guys and the bad guys are will improve and speed up significantly for the rest of your life.
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I don’t know any back-home losers blooming in a new situation. But I gave the advice to my son, over and over, to go out and do something. A woman wasn’t going to come out of that game console. Do do cool stuff, enjoy life. It’s what I did.
His friend still lives at home, at nearly 30. Barely works. Sure as hell ain’t “blooming”. I know more that whine than do things.
The other advice I gave him came in the form of a book – “Pushing Rubber Downhill”, by Adam Piggott. I said read this. Dude followed a chick across Australia, then found his way in life.
I can’t tell you how many articles I’ve read in a cycle magazine where someone buys a beater bike and goes across country. When he got a bike I told him to go travel around to ‘dot’ cities. The article I read, when I started doing it, said to stay away from the interstate. Stay away from ‘yellow’ cities. (On paper maps, a larger city will have a yellow area around it. Smaller cities are just a dot and a name. Nearly all of them have a restaurant of some sort. Many have a motel.
A take the road less traveled sort of thing. I spent so much time traveling around the blue ridge mountains and Shenandoah valley, I nearly moved there.
You don’t need much money.
Far as generation loser goes – get a job. Work low on the food chain – like a trade or a warehouse. Maybe clean nursing home rooms (Iike I did). You’ll meet all sorts of people and you’ll come to realize how good you have it.
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Could be as simple as not being able to access weed, games & pr0n when travelling, so why bother?
It is also possible that perennially online young men might not have the same behaviors. They’re busy doing things, whether it’s starting a small business, working for a young family.
Then there’s all the guys who aren’t stoned out of their minds one sees passing through… Tatted to the nines, looking fit, maybe a bike, definitely a pack. Maybe they’re having adventures, as well, but again, not the kind of thing that makes it to where we’d see it, online.
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Elliott Roger (remembered his name) objected to going back to Morocco because he wouldn’t be able to play World of Warcraft there, if I recall correctly.
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The excuses are gold, although they can be applied to almost any situation. It took me a long time to realise it, but one day I figured out that you can always make an excuse to not do something, but you only need one “excuse” to go and do something. So acknowledge that you’re blocking yourself and get it done, whatever it is. Easier said than done, but you gotta start somewhere.
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There’s always a good reason not to do the thing you have to do.
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Quite right. Though I’ve found, depending on the thing, that even a poor reason will suffice!
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The gender roles have been reversed. All education favors girls, all media expects girls to be boss bitches. Everybody mocks young men, nobody helps them. Has everyone forgotten what Dalrock said about the churches being “beta factories?” You cannot expect the long house, a matriarchal culture, to produce brave men. Not saying these boys aren’t punks, but why would they be anything other than punks in this society?
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Well said.
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We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful. —C.S. Lewis
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I’m over seventy with many physical restrictions, and I am dying. Been living almost a decade in remote parts of a ‘third-world’ country. Sweet people. No P.C.
No medical insurance, small retirement income. Often no transportation. Access to meds and medical care is nil to minimal. Sure, it’s a little bumpy.
Hate Feminist Amerika? Live in an anglo nation that despises you, and makes that very clear daily?
SovietMan is right. Hit the road and stop whining and looking for excuses. Lots of places in the world where Woke and Feminism haven’t taken over everything yet. Find them. Many places still respect honorable and strong men, and if you earn them, you will be shown love and honor that no longer can be had in your gelded nations. Go get it. It ain’t gonna land on your porch.
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‘I’m not convinced that our raising of boys is the totality of the problem.’
It’s not the totality of the problem. There are other factors, some of which you cite. But FATHERLESS boys living in feminist (masculine-hating) nations is ninety percent of the problem.
‘We’ don’t raise boys anymore, like in the fifties and sixties. Women and their State/culture raise boys . . . badly. This isn’t accidental, but very much a goal of elements who long understood that separating boys from dads and a masculine culture = weak, pliable, frightened sheep. Sheep are easy to herd, fleece, and eat. Lions, not so much.
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One thing that could help is first going overseas with some kind of organization. Could be a missionary group if you’re religous. Maybe the Peace Corps if you’re American. I think other WEIRD countries mostly have organizations that are much like the Peace Corps. There’s study abroad of course, but that would require attending a university which might not be a good idea at this point for various reasons.
Anyway, going with an organization has the advantage of their helping you with visas and local regulations, as well as teaching you how to do everyday things like taking the bus or paying your electric bill. Once you’ve seen how it’s all doable in one country, you’re probably more likely to attempt it on your own in a different place or just go back to the country you know if you like it there.
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