The Omega Male Diaries #1

Greetings:

Some people come and go from this earth and never know the truth about their position in the world they were operating in. And while I came to the full truth about my position in this world at the age of 58, I am not as bitter as some people in my position might be because finding out the truth in this very life we are living, however brutal that truth may be, is a philosophical victory.

In one sense, the philosopher has no other standard by which he measures victory, except to measure how closely he feels he is to getting to the truth of the matter of his own existence and the forces that dominate it, whatsoever they may turn out to be and howsoever they may turn out to operate. Secondary rewards that could come with that are interesting and good, but not the ultimate reward.

Eventually I came to find out what an omega male is, and then some years later came to understand that I was precisely one of them. However, unlike other omega male bloggers, I don't seek to demonize women or launch into some libertarian babble. Having neither sexist nor conservative fixations, and not having any goal related to taking rights or social services away from others, I can safely say I'm probably the most liberal and non-hate-filled person to comment on omega male life.

There are no delusions here about revolutionizing wider society any time soon, and no grandiose notions of changing everyone's minds about gender roles. The goal of this probably-short series of columns will simply be to aid one or more people who are confused about whether or not they are an omega male, and, should they discover they are, to provide simple survival strategies for them.

The goal here is not to take revenge, launch a series of put-downs, or somehow get back at society for what I and others have gone through, but merely to assist in providing a tool or two for omega men to get through another day with at least some of their body and mind and soul intact.

Additionally, there is also no religious agenda here, not in the sense of seeking converts to any dogma. And while certain faiths may be mentioned, or even deeply challenged, it will not be for the purpose of carrying on some theological seminar, but rather to show how virtually every social system, whether economic, familial, educational, religious, or romantic, is ordered to exclude, demote, marginalize and finally discredit the omega male. The reasons for this are many, and, oddly, I will, in the end, attribute the suffering of omega men more to the impersonal forces of nature rather than to the vicissitudes of the human will.

In fact, even before I define what an omega male is, I want to begin this whole project by saying that not taking things too personally is the key to survival. And even if most relationships have to be fled, ended, changed or evaded, that, in the end, one must forgive, but not in some goody-good, doormat way, but out of the good-natured realization that human beings are still within the natural order, and their intellect, while covering this over, never exempts them from the accidental demands of natural selection.

In today's short entry, I won't do much definitional work or offer many tools, but merely seek to announce that the project of finally addressing what on earth an omega male needs to do to survive, (and survival is not guaranteed even if he does everything right), will in earnest begin. With ill will toward none, and a desire to better my own future and the future of men suffering in this social condition, I greet everyone, including interested women, to this brief project, which I hope to continue in column #2 and beyond.

Because most notorious commentators on the condition of men who aren't faring well, for whatever reason, tend to devolve into a very black-and-white demonization of ordinary women and ordinary government, I wanted to take a moment, from the outset, to say that I will attempt to minimize any of the usual "shady business" associated with anyone and anything that attempts to deal with the needs of men, especially marginalized men.

A note of compassion for the other commentators on the states of omega men: Generally, these are people who, like myself, are deeply wounded, and who are deeply troubled, and who, even in their newfound status as celebrities, find themselves in profound states of isolation. It's easy enough to castigate and judge people who are lashing out in bigoted or antisocial ways, but it's also important to keep in mind that this is often the product of a social system which has forbidden anyone not doing well to even speak.

The deeply-enforced invisibility of omega men generally means that by the time they defy everyone they've ever known in order to speak out, they will generally come off sounding like crazy men. But this is true of any person who remains in rigidly-enforced silence who breaks out of that social box. They generally won't come out of that solitary confinement and share love with us. They are not simply bitter because they chose to be, but are reasonably quite bitter.

Resisting the temptation to spew hatred in every direction is not easy when one has felt either trampled on, enslaved or entirely abandoned and forgotten. So, even as I make the possibly-vain attempt to not duplicate the past mistakes of such commentators, I proceed with the attempt to respect their pain, as well as my own, but to somehow also approach the wider world with the goal of coming to an understanding, at least with one or more people.

And finally, and I say this to help soothe that pain of omega men, it is important to realize that your role, while seemingly created for some personal or sadistic reasons, was likely arrived at by a series of accidents, misunderstandings and dire needs on the part of individuals and groups. In short, there is no evidence that any human-like pack-mammal species can survive long without omega males; and so it is unwise to jump to the conclusion that omega men exist for only futile reasons which serve no constructive purpose. In fact, the evidence bears out, and Murakami testifies to it, that in every similar social system to ours "someone must be sacrificed." And if this is both a systemic truth and a survival truth, then it might even be unwise to attempt to undo the entire social order and free all omega men in one fell swoop.

Therefore, my goals here are modest, possibly because the safest and most constructive thing to do is not to send all of society into a state of shock by eliminating a whole category of much-needed people. The human race has largely been run on slavery, in all it's guises; and while formal slavery is nothing many people are laying formal claim to advocating, more subtle forms of informal slavery are still the basic and final engine of this economy and every substantial world economy before ours. Hence, my work will seek to venture only to the margins of the world, where it could, perhaps, free a person here and there. And even those small accomplishments will not be something I insist on, as I am, after all, experimenting with a new way of blogging, or journalizing, or editorializing, on topics I care about. And so I hold this, and the coming columns as just this, merely an interesting experiment.