Table of Contents

Step 1: Physical
Step 2: Spiritual
Step 3: Emotional
Step 4: Mental

Step 1: Physical

This is the easiest step to diagnose and the second most difficult to deal with. If you don’t know if you need to lose weight or get in better shape, go ahead and stop reading now, find a scale and check out how close you are to the right BMI. If you are more than eight points too high then you definitely need to lose some weight. (I’ll deal with the “BMI is bullshit!” argument later). I suggest scheduling a physical to check blood pressure and cholesterol as well, along with the regular battery of blood work tests, but if the means aren’t there to go to a doctor then head the drug store and at least check your blood pressure for free. There’s no excuse for not knowing your weight, and blood pressure. You can’t honestly approach your health without the facts so go and find out even if you are afraid of what you will find.

If you already know all of your vital health info and are in excellent physical health, and cardiovascular shape then you can skip the rest of this entire post. Congratulations on doing what few in modern society can manage and even fewer Gammas ever manage to do. Well done.

As for weight loss here’s the brutally honest facts and the secret diet plan: You must expend more calories than you consume over an extended period of time to lose excess body fat.

Of course this is much easier said than done so I will now discuss dieting. I don’t care what diet you are on to lose weight and nobody else does either. Let me repeat that: I don’t care what diet you are on and nobody else does either. The goal is to lose body fat and I’m no expert in dieting so I’ll not give one single, suggestion on what diet to choose, what I will comment on is all of the typical Gamma responses to dieting.

Excuses

The most common Gamma response to diet and exercise is a litany of excuses.

• BMI is bullshit! – Maybe it is, I don’t know, but it’s a tool that can get you in the ballpark and besides this has nothing at all to do with you being fat, a lot of things are bullshit in life, and they also have nothing to do with you being fat. Stop being hopelessly obtuse and binary in your thinking; that because BMI is flawed it in any way impacts your diet and exercise efforts.
• I don’t have the time to go to the gym – I don’t most days either, but that doesn’t mean I can’t do something every day. You have a floor, right? Get down on it for 10 minutes and do some good stretches. If you have 20 minutes you can get out a Pilates ball and work on it. You don’t have to go to the gym; you just have to do something.
• I don’t have the money for the gym – You don’t need it to work out. Walking is still free. In a bad neighborhood or snowed in? Do some yoga, youtube videos are available.
• It only pays off it you can be JJ Watt – More binary thinking acting as an excuse. Yes, JJ Watt can afford a cabin in the middle of Wisconsin, be a hermit, and work out all day. You can’t and this has nothing to do with you working out.
• If I worked out I’d be in great shape if I wanted to – I bet you would, but you aren’t.
• American, Western diet is bullshit, man. Like GMOs, carbs, caveman, gluten, sugar, fat, protein and stuff, man. There’s no way I can do it. –  Shut. Your. Whore. Mouth. See below.

Diets or otherwise known as: Shut. Your. Whore. Mouth.

The number one rule for men and dieting is: You do not talk about dieting. Read this previous statement again and say out loud: “I will not speak of my diet.” There are reasons for this which is that nobody cares about your diet, and nobody wants to hear about your diet. Even your mother doesn’t care. The world doesn’t need another fat guy running around telling everyone he’s found the holy grail of dieting because he read a book or a website, and has been following the plan for the last 92 ½ hours, or even 92 days.

You want to stamp a giant GAMMA on your forehead? Then pontificate at every meal and opportunity about your new favorite diet, and how most things people eat are killing them. You want to ruin the few dates you manage to get or even the opportunity to ask a girl on a date? Tell the girl across from you all about her terrible selections off the menu and how much of a better job you’ve done. Women love hearing about what they are eating is making them fat, you ladies’ man! Keep it up. Your newfound knowledge makes you the food police and everyone will appreciate your efforts, I’m sure.

That’s the easy part, here’s the tough part: You cannot comment online in any manner about the superiority of your diet, debate diets, tell others you are on a diet, or even comment on the “horrors” of the modern, Western diet until you’ve had one year of success on your current diet. ONE YEAR. You have no right as a dieter to tell anyone how to diet or what to eat until you’ve had one solid year of success on your diet, to do so otherwise is disingenuous, perhaps in the extreme. Success can be encapsulated by filling out the following sentence: In the last year I’ve been living the XXX diet and lost XXX pounds, lowered my BP and cholesterol by XXX, and feel better than ever. If you cannot honestly fill out this sentence, shut up.

That was negative, but as a Gamma I know you respond to the negative first so here are the techniques to help you out.

1. Practice stoicism with your diet. This is a quiet, calm acceptance of what the diet brings, including the successes and failures.
2. If anyone ever asks you about what you’d like to eat when you are a guest never tell them to modify what they are making to accommodate your diet. You have to be the one which practices self-control and deals with what is on your plate. In other words you don’t want to be known as the weirdo who nobody wants to invite over because your diet. (None of this applies to legitimate food allergies or celiac disease, etc.)
3. If you make a meal for others, be sure there’s food for all tastes; don’t force people into your diet.
4. If you start to make healthier choices, women notice and they will follow. Want a practical experiment? If you have a girlfriend, wife, or just eat around some women, regularly start picking the healthier options and you will see just like magic the women will too. Occasionally they will get upset instead, but they notice. My wife still remembers to this day that on our very first date I skipped the chips and ate the fruit. I never mentioned a thing about being on a diet, though I was at the time.
5. The same stoicism applies to your workout too. I don’t care if you like free weights vs. machines, crossfit, running, or whatever. Keep your mouth shut and just go about your business.
6. Whenever you feel like talking about your success in whatever you are doing in that first year, channel that energy into doing it even better rather than talking about it. Lead by example.
7. If you are under 30 try picking up a highly physical competitive sport when you can handle it like a basketball, or soccer league or martial arts. Competition shakes out the Gamma tendencies and is great exercise.
8. If you are under 30-40 find a less brutal physical sport like company softball, church basketball, etc.
9. If you are over 40 that ship has likely sailed if you’ve never competed, but you will have one big advantage, if you start this late your joints are likely in better shape so if you do play a sport you might do well at it because your body isn’t as worn out. If you don’t play a sport, simply exercise instead.

Living this out in the real world

The most important thing to remember is never to give up. Everyone needs to lose weight and do better at eating except JJ Watt, and he’d probably tell you he’s slacking way too much this off season. There is no time when, “You’ll be in perfect shape”. It’s a lifelong struggle filled with ups and down, and periods where you’ll likely give up for a while and then get back on the wagon. That’s how it goes, and that’s OK so long as you do get back on the wagon. Measure your success by making small strides every day, like picking the fruit over chips, or 10 minutes of good stretching and pushups when you can’t get to the gym, rather than focusing on failure or setting impossible goals.

Personally I’m down from before I got married, but I still need to lose a lot of weight. I’ve struggled with it my whole life, but the only time it’s defeated me is when I quit trying. If you never lose any weight you are doing something wrong, so try a different diet and exercise regime until one works. Here are some responses to help you:

Person: ”You don’t want any more of this? You on a diet or something?”
You: “I’m full, thanks.”
Person: ”What do you think about the diet-du jour I’m all into?!?!”
You: “I don’t know… I just try to watch what I eat.

Girl: “I love chocolate cake, you? I mean I could eat this whole thing if I didn’t stop!”
You: “Yeah, I know what you mean. I love desserts too.”
*You eat one small piece in front of her*

Girlfriend/wife: “I want to lose weight, honey. I’m going to try the XYZ diet I heard about. What do you think?” **DING! DING! This is good news she’s changing for you.**
You: “Sounds like a good idea; I’ll watch what I eat too. I know I need to watch it sometimes.” *Then you stick to your diet and just help when she asks for it. Ultimately her food choices are NOT your responsibility*

Person at gym: “I’m doing this exercise thing I’m so excited about let me tell you all about why it is better than what everyone else does…”
You-interrupting: “Hey man, that’s cool and I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m here to get a workout in, so can I get back to my thing?” *walk away if you need to*

Person: “We are having a BBQ this weekend, is there anything you can’t eat? I’ve noticed you’ve lost some weight, are you on some diet? I don’t want to mess you up or anything…”
You: “Oh no, whatever you make is just fine. I’ve lost a little weight lately, thanks for noticing.”
Person: “No really, you’ve lost some serious weight these last six months, what have you been doing? Atkins? I know a girl who…”
You: *after waiting for them to catch their breath so you aren’t rude* “I’ve just been watching it some, nothing special. Thanks for the invite, I’ll see you there.”

The anti-Gamma conclusion on Physical aspect of life: Never give up. Never!

So here’s the first test for everyone who comments on this post: you cannot talk about your diet, debate diets, or tell everyone about your exercise program unless you can honestly start your first post by filling out the following sentence: In the last year I’ve been living the XXX diet and lost XXX pounds, lowered my BP and cholesterol by XXX and here’s why I think it works.

Step 2: Spiritual

For many in the modern times the Spiritual is something to be cast off, as it only interferes with desires or perhaps even knowledge. I believe this is a mistake, especially for the Gamma who needs a firm foundation to escape his prison of dishonesty. For the secularists who are about to stop reading don’t, this isn’t a polemic against atheism or a Christian apologetic work but rather an exhortation to find one’s roots and deals with personal ethics.

I’ll lay my cards on the table and explain my position which is a very standard, Protestant, Evangelical, and orthodox one. I’m Protestant by agreeing with the Solas from the Reformation and orthodox by accepting the ancient Christian creeds, Apostles, Nicene, and Athanasian.

Know what you believe and why you believe it.

The most common error I see Gammas make in regards to spiritual and ethical matters is treating it like a game of witty comments, snark, and playing at the edges of important matters without skin in the game. The second mistake is thinking width of knowledge of spiritual matters is more important than depth. This flows directly from the Gamma’s ever-present and crippling fear of being wrong somewhere and somehow. The Gamma does not understand the deep matters behind what is going on in his own beliefs, which is ironic since most Gammas vastly overestimate their knowledge and ability in most everything.

The first step is to go deep in your current beliefs, back to the foundational documents to study and know them very well. Find the founding documents of your closest beliefs and read through them carefully. For the religious this is of course their holy book, but do you not identify in some way with a denomination, or at least a philosophy of your religion? Don’t concentrate on just the latest popular Christian book if you are Christian or Dawkins latest book if you are an atheist, go to the catechism if you are Roman Catholic, the Confessions if your denomination if you are Protestant, church history if you home church, and ancient atheist philosophy if you are completely secular just to start. People lived and died by these beliefs, find out why.

If you ascribe to their beliefs you honor the ones who came before you if you read their works carefully. Don’t skim, but rather drink in with full appreciation of their insights and the flaws. Almost certainly you are going to be surprised by some of the things you find. During this process take stock of your family’s beliefs; the faith of your parents particularly if you currently reject it. Give their beliefs a fair chance, read through those documents and not how badly your parents lived up to those ideals. This discovery can be challenging as the language can be archaic, but it’s well worth the effort.

It’s important to read the original documents and not the most recent interpretation of those documents even if they are by a favorite author. I’ve found that writers I respect a great deal can be sloppy at times or interject their own pet theories into a system, and then claim that’s what the system is all about. If you claim to believe in something, or follow an idea, you need to read the original for yourself.

If you are religious pray a great deal about what you find in humility and ask for forgiveness in being arrogant and obnoxious about your beliefs. Pray for wisdom and insight. Pray for a peaceful soul when finding troubling new truths. If you are secular dwell and contemplate what you have read. Realize you are probably not nearly as smart as you’d like to think and you need to change when the truth leads you to an inevitable conclusion.

You do this because you need depth on your beliefs, not width. You don’t need to know everything about everyone else’s beliefs; you need to know yours very well and how to defend them.

Honesty

The first undertaking is to be honest with yourself about your beliefs and why you hold them. The second is to live up to the beliefs consistently as possible.

For the secularist I recommend writing down the virtues you admire and would like to see in yourself and your children. Then keep track for a week or two how well you actually keep to your own beliefs. I think it’s safe to say that unless you admire almost no virtues you’ll not do very well at this exercise. Keep this in mind the next time you just can’t wait to pounce on someone for not upholding their own professed beliefs.

For the religious keep in mind that your dishonesty can offend those around you and yourself, but ultimately the sin is against God. If you live dishonestly, and support dishonesty in yourself and others aren’t fooling the One who really counts.

Iron Sharpens Iron

Unlike Step One: Physical in which you need to keep your mouth shut until you put up, in these matters it is helpful and even expected to go to mentors, clergy, and the learned to help you understand things. After you read through the foundational documents of your beliefs you can do the following.

I first suggest you meeting with your pastor or priest with questions.  (If secular perhaps a good mentor or old, secular friend.) Maybe they are simple and can even be handled by email. These are all non-confrontational meetings in which you are humbly trying to understand and clarify something. This is not under any circumstances an opportunity for you to take on your pastor in a dialectic (or even worse some rhetoric) with some new insight.

The second place is to enter into discussions is in online forums which encourage lively philosophical and theological debates. Two rules here:

1. Approach the matter humbly as a student, no arrogance, and seek to find answers, not score points or pontificate. Don’t make your question a sermon.

2. Never, ever be passive-aggressive in a spiritual question. You should never be passive-aggressive, but the offense here is exponential and you look like an ass.

Examples:

Right: I struggle with how God can allow children to suffer. I find this is one of the barriers to me believing he exists or at least cares at all. How do Christians answer this?
Wrong: How come the invisible sky-daddy doesn’t save all the children from harm or regrow their arms when they lose one? Answer me that, God-botherers!
Wrong (Passive aggressive): I don’t understand why God allows children to suffer. Certainly if he exists he’ll keep the good and nice Christian children from harm right? I mean you pray to him and he said he’d give you anything you ask, correct?

Right: I’ve wondered how a secularist comes to moral conclusions about weighty issues. What do you personally find works for you
Wrong: An atheist can never know right from wrong so how do you tell me what to do or believe? Do you even know yourself what’s right?

Right: Can a Roman Catholic here please help me better understand pedobaptism? I don’t find it in the New Testament, so is there another reason for it?
Wrong: How does throwing water on your baby magically give them faith Mary worshiper?

Forgiveness

One of the most difficult things for Gammas to do is to forgive. They are so afraid of being seen as wrong or disliked they almost never forgive a slight and think that others never forgive either. They hold grudges, they are passive-aggressive towards people who have embarrassed them, or ignore them (block them on Twitter in today’s world), and they don’t even forgive themselves for wrongs. Gammas don’t forgive themselves, instead they lie to themselves and claim that they have done no wrong.  If they do happen to admit to themselves they did something wrong, they typically obsess about it to the point of exhaustion, but never deal with it. It’s big reason why their relationships are perpetually troubled, they come across as disingenuous to most people because they genuinely are, and they obsess about minor offenses because they aren’t honest and they don’t know how to forgive.

Forgiveness is a big part of a spiritual life, and life in general. Don’t be obtuse about this either, that I’m talking about a wishy-washy faux forgiveness in which one claims there’s nothing to forgive. You are not obligated to forgive someone who is not sorry and unrepentant for their actions against you, though in charity you might eventually decide to forget them. When you forgive someone whom you believe is legitimately repentant for their action, that’s the end of it. Repentance isn’t just being sorry, it means changing one’s behavior, which is a big difference. You don’t lord their past actions over them, demand penance, or other such nonsense. You move on. You should also seek reconciliation against those you have legitimately wronged. However, don’t let your attempt at reconciliation turn into an attempt at revenge against you. Forgiving someone doesn’t mean you have to date them, marry them, or even associate with them anymore beyond being civil if you are in the room with them. Forgiveness is not affection.

Being a man means being honest with yourself about your actions, taking responsibility for them, seeking reconciliation when you’ve done wrong, and forgiving those who have wronged you when they are repentant.

Integrity

Don’t give out your word easily or say you will do something you think you cannot do or will not realistically do. This isn’t a technique to dodge responsibility, but rather a way to focus your abilities into the things you can actually accomplish and do well. A Gamma will act like he can do things he can’t and has a profound inability to take responsibility for his actions and typically resorts to running, lying, and deflecting as to avoid consequences. Once you start taking responsibility for things you will find it starts to become natural though not always easy. If someone gives you a task to do and you aren’t sure you can do it, there’s nothing wrong with letting them know you may not succeed but then assure them you will give it your full effort. If you fail, take full responsibility for your actions even if someone else put you in a tough spot, but be honest about how you ended up there if people inquire.

Leading the Way

Women despise men who have no firm foundations of beliefs. They may not notice for a while if you are careful, but eventually they spot your inconsistent behavior and lose respect for you. A firm foundation and wellspring from which you draw your beliefs about the universe acts like a rock of stability which women respect even if they don’t believe the same. You’ll find the same is true with men as well. Christians routinely say, and mean it when they’d rather deal with an honest atheist than a dishonest Christian.

This is pure Game here, which is standing out in the crowd. In today’s word will not an honest and honorable man not stand out in the crowd? I hear the cynic now talking about how an honest man is naïve, and people spit on honor. Honesty is not naïve it means dealing with how things really are, and who cares if the degenerates of the world scoff at virtue? They have always scoffed and they’ll scoff to their grave and perhaps beyond.

Eternal Matters

The reason that depth is more important than width here is the gravity of the subject at hand. Even if you think oblivion awaits everyone, it’s still an eternal oblivion. If you have children then what you pass on to them can carry on for generations.

For the Gamma this lack of personal, spiritual, honesty is the underpinning of all of their problems. If you start to become honest with yourself, learn about why you believe certain things at a deep level, are ready to forgive and also repent when you do wrong, you’ll find the other steps: Physical, Mental, and Emotional become easier to correct.

The anti-Gamma conclusion on Spiritual aspect of life: The world needs more honest men and honorable men. Be one of them.

Step 3: Emotional

The Gamma lives on an emotional roller coaster which goes from anxious repression to emotional outbursts which can accumulate into rage and then despair. A Gamma is effectively out of balance emotionally and which is why they are so obnoxious to people around them and especially to women.

I have a couple of ideas of why this is so, and my guess is that a Gamma was a boy who was just a little more emotionally sensitive and a bit smarter than the average boy, then experienced some combination of the following factors: a Gamma father or father figure, raised by women alone, bullied rather heavily, socially awkward and had trouble knowing how to act, overweight or possessed some other physical trait that made him overly self-conscious. I don’t think it is any one thing, but rather a combination of several influences and events beyond which slowly turns a boy who might have some tendencies towards being a Gamma into a full-blown Gamma in adulthood. If you suspect you are a Gamma you’ll probably find this list or events like this to be still painful in your memory. Take that same boy and surround him with strong, but patient men, and have him enter into a masculine profession or the military, and he’d probably turn out a Delta or a Delta with a few Gamma traits.

Swinging the pendulum

After a lifetime of Gamma reinforcement how does a man turn things around? I suggest for one month swinging the pendulum far in the opposite direction. Almost like an emotional detox, the Gamma needs to completely turn around for a time and get off the emotional roller coaster. I suggest one month of practicing the ancient philosophy of Stoicism. The first step is to get yourself a copy of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations. My favorite version is by Everyman’s Library as the language has been updated, but it costs money, so there’s a free version here, and if you want a printed book they are easy to find used or are always at the local library. This is the place to start because it isn’t a philosophical abstract but instead a portrait of an Emperor and how he lives out the philosophy in his daily life. It’s also a damn good read.

As for a definition of Stoicism I’m going straight to the dictionary:
1. the endurance of pain or hardship without a display of feelings and without complaint.

From dictionary.com:
A philosophy that flourished in ancient Greece and Rome. Stoics believed that people should strictly restrain their emotions in order to attain happiness and wisdom; hence, they refused to demonstrate either joy or sorrow.

You can read more about it on Wikipedia, but for our purposes the above are sufficient. I’m sure there’s someone out there who will take umbrage with this definition and can’t wait to spam the comments with a debate about the true definition of Stoicism and their “oh so interesting” knowledge about Stoicism. Don’t do it because it doesn’t matter here and you will be missing the point. I don’t bring up Stoicism to debate its meaning or to claim it has superiority over all other philosophies or other such irrelevant topics, only that it can be a useful tool to help one graduate from Gamma.

Practical Application

1. Drop all snarky, flippant, and silly comments and voices about people and things. Its fine to tell an actually joke, but stop trying to be cute and funny all of the damn time. Witty remarks are useful, but you need to take a break for a bit.
2. This month drop all online forum debates, especially when you are really emotionally invested. Go silent in your profiles unless it’s reassuring a community you are OK, ONLY if they ask.
3. Stay away from social media unless you have to get on it for a specific reason. Social media is a hotbed of emotional flame wars.
4. When in groups of friends and families and a hot-button topic comes up in which you’d typically dive into (and of course wow the ladies with your stellar command of minutia!) keep your mouth shut and simply watch and listen to the participants instead.
5. Stop watching any and all reality TV shows in which there’s a lot of screaming and emotional manipulation going on to get a rise out of the audience.
6. Stay away from news stories which you know act as a trigger for you to instantly get upset about.
7. Try to schedule some time, even if it’s just most of a single day to go somewhere solitary and quiet in the outdoors. When there make an effort to quiet your mind, drop the internal debates about politics, religion, etc., going on in there and instead focus on good things in life that you’ve been blessed with. This can be done multiple times if needed.
8. If you have a wife or girlfriend don’t be baited by the typical arguments you two have this month, and be aware of what you say before you say it if things get heated. Instead show them love as it covers a multitude of sins, and patience as you realize you have probably been just as guilty as them in emotional manipulation.
9. Kindly tell your female friends (especially that one you really want to date) to unburden their emotions on someone else. Don’t be rude, but be firm.
10. If someone emotionally vomits all over you, tries to get an emotional rise out of you, engage you in a rhetorical argument, or tells stupid and silly jokes, simply grunt in reply. I’m serious here, grunt. Don’t get baited in; don’t tell them all about how you are now a quiet Stoic. The responses you get from this will be eye opening to say the least, and are sometimes quite funny. Just be sure to keep a straight face. Please practice your grunt now.

Staying Put, Continuing On, or Seeking Help

Hopefully after one month you will have a substantial increase in clarity of thought, emotional balance and most importantly become more aware of your emotional triggers. You should be able to start controlling your actions when you become emotional. You cannot control the fact that you have emotions, but you can limit exposure to situations in which you know you will become extremely emotional, and you can work on always controlling your actions regardless of how you feel at the moment.

If after one month you feel you need to continue in stoicism and introspection then go ahead and do it for up to six months. Sometimes you need a reset to get yourself out of a behavioral pattern. Vox has said more than once that he got to a point in his life where he finally stopped doing much of anything but martial arts training for six months.  I stopped trying to date, and concentrated on working out and just thinking about life for several months before I got back into it and found success. Sometimes a man just has to step back for a while and re-evaluate his life in order to improve his actions. It can take time.

On the other hand, if after a time of introspection you find that you are becoming more upset, emotional, depressed, or even suicidal, then please seek professional help. Sometimes the shock of leaving trying to leave Gammahood, especially if there has been childhood abuse, can be overwhelming for a man, and in that case he will need more that just a good friend and introspection. It's not a statistical quirk that causes suicide rates for men to be higher than for women and you need to take care of yourself.

Leaving Stoicism

I think Stoicism is one of the greatest philosophies of Man, and it can be especially helpful for men when they get out of balance, but the point to this post isn’t to create philosophers or hermits. I don’t think that repressing joy in vain hopes of philosophical happiness is a good idea. A man should be able to have a good belly laugh with his friends, be of cheerful spirit, and show deep love and affection for his children and wife. Don’t think at a funeral of a friend or family member you can’t cry, even Jesus wept at the grave of his friend. Stoicism is a tool, not a straightjacket to use to turn you into Spock. After practicing it this month, take the positive elements from it and work them into your life. Wouldn’t you like to be known as the guy who is cool under pressure? The man in the extended family who can be relied upon to be sober-minded and reliable when there’s an emergency? An employee or businessman known to be fair and evenhanded even when chaos swirls around him?

The anti-Gamma conclusion on Emotional aspect of life: You can’t stop yourself from having emotions, but you can control your actions in response to them.

Step 4: Mental

There is no man on the planet more intellectually dishonest than a Gamma, as even an Omega has enough self-awareness to avoid being a buffoon at social event and will instead stay at home and play computer games. Everything from a Gamma is a con or a presented image because behind that shell is a scared, miserable boy who uses whatever tools are at his disposal to build the Gamma Delusion Bubble. The Gamma Delusion Bubble shields the Gamma from somehow and some way ever being wrong about anything, as there is no being wrong about “something”, there is only being a wrong “person”. His identity is so tied up in his opinions about everything, including himself, that any slip-up is a catastrophe which must be avoided at all costs.

I don’t know

The second-most terrifying statement for a Gamma is to admit that he doesn’t know something. A Gamma constantly speaks of having knowledge in areas he most certainly does not. Being ignorant for a Gamma is being discredited as a person, so they will do what is in their power to bluff, obfuscate, and redirect people so others don’t see their ignorance. If you wish to escape the life of a Gamma you must learn the statement, “I don’t know” and use it when it is appropriate.

I must unfortunately take a moment to explain to the binary-thinking Gammas that no, you do not go from being a know-it-all to blurting out “I don’t know” at the start of nearly every conversation, feel the need to explain all of the time now about how you don’t know something, and talk about how proud you are about not to knowing things. You may laugh at this, but I know Gammas well, and there are some out there who will do this exact thing thinking they are improving their situation, until it obviously doesn’t work and they blame this post for their failures.

In simple practice you say this when needed and you honestly don’t know about the topic at hand. While at first glance it seems easy enough if you are a Gamma, it is difficult in reality. It’s challenging because typically you’ve already hung yourself on your own ignorance in a conversation by saying way more than you should have, and by the time you are challenged on a point, having to say you don’t know part of it means your entire argument might collapse. Think about this for a moment. If you are saying so much that if someone challenges a point, and by admitting that you don’t know about something in which you are pontificating about, it destroys what you are saying, where was your first error? It was bull-shitting in the first place. Stop making definitive statements about things if you can’t back them up with logic or evidence, unless it is clearly a subjective opinion of little matter.Examples of subjective opinions of little matter: favorite color, sports teams, movies you like, the hottest actress. You don’t have to know why you have a favorite sports team or why you like green over blue, it doesn’t matter. On the other hand if you think we should use gold as a currency rather than fiat, you’d better know all about the subject before trying to tell people how the monetary system should be run. Gammas do not want to admit ignorance, they want to appear intelligent, so they overreach their arguments and then feel they can’t backtrack an inch.

I am wrong

The most terrifying statement for a Gamma is admitting he is wrong about something. You must start to take responsibility for your words and actions if you want to stop being a Gamma. Once again, this is exceedingly difficult if you are not used to doing it. Do you realize the power there is in the words: “I am wrong”? These aren’t words of weakness but of power, first, because you speak the truth, and second, because this truth allows you room for correction. In other words, if you never admit you are wrong, you can never correct your thinking.

Instead of trying to bluff when asked if you know something about what you’ve stated, say this instead: “You make a good point, I don’t know.” They may leave it at that and let it go, which means you just got off easy. If they push the point and destroy your shoddy argument, you now have to take the beating like a man. Don’t whine, don’t ask for mercy, don’t lie, don’t get snarky, and don’t disappear, TAKE IT. Then, when they are finished demolishing your ill-conceived statements, you should reply: “I was wrong. I didn’t think that through very well and it turns out you were right.” Sucks doesn’t it? Think of it this way, you picked a fight with someone tougher than you and you got a bloody nose. Now, are you going to go run home to mommy crying or are you going to train harder for the next fight? If you want to know what separates a Gamma from a Delta in the Mental aspect of life it is this response right here. A Delta knows when he is beaten and will submit, but Gamma knows he is beaten and then lies incessantly to himself and others about the loss because he cannot admit defeat.

This is why Gammas hate and fear Alphas so much, as an Alpha will not relent and will keep beating someone (in a physical fight, rhetoric, or dialectic) until the other submits or it is clear to everyone that he has defeated the opponent. Everyone else in the hierarchy will submit or be destroyed, but the Gamma will never admit defeat and so the Alpha will keep throwing punches until onlookers literally start to beg the Gamma to stop making a fool of himself. The Gamma’s appeals will get more hysterical, more emotional and the Alpha will take the hysteria, form it into a club, and splatter the Gamma's proverbial brains all over the pavement to the eventual horror (or in some cases, snickers), of the crowd.

In an online environment, a Gamma can act like a buffoon forever until he disappears or is banned from a site for his actions; in real life eventually the Gamma is socked in the nose or worse when he plays this sort of game with an Alpha one too many times. I think all boys have witnessed this at least once: some little twerp mouths off to the leader of the group of boys (not a bully, but the de facto leader), and the next thing the twerp knows is he has a black eye and is running to women for protection from the “bully”. Don’t mistake this for defending bullies, I hate bullies, this is a kid being a smart-aleck towards another boy in an attempt to undermine his status, who pays for it, but then won’t accept his status after being put in his place. Since most adults never get into any physical confrontation the most common scenario you’ll see is the Gamma mouth off to a man of higher status, the higher-status man turns around, looks them in the eye, and challenges them. The Gamma will generally turn pale and try to leave the situation, or he will lie about the challenge in the first place.

Let me clarify the challenge in the male hierarchy. It goes on all the time and is a natural part of life as a man. In fact, it’s healthy, as men are much more efficient as a group when the order is more or less defined. If a Delta challenges the Alpha, he gets smacked around a little, then gets back in line. The Gamma challenges the Alpha and doesn’t get back in line, instead he lies about the challenge, insults the Alpha’s character, tries to humor his way out of it, whines when he gets smacked, swears hatred towards the Alpha, and derides anyone who makes him feel bad or sides with the Alpha. He does anything and everything to lie about not being beaten. This is why in Bizarro Gamma World they will sometimes claim to be Alphas, because in their minds they are never beaten when everyone else sees a sorry sack of a man who is thoroughly and completed beaten, but won’t admit defeat. This isn’t a Rocky Balboa-type desire to never quit, which would be admirable, but rather, it would be like Rocky, after being beaten senseless by Clubber Lan,g then running around the ring talking about his gloves not being on right, he didn’t hear the bell, Lang being a hateful and racist fighter, then pretending the fight never happened while cracking lame jokes about boxing being a stupid sport. That Rocky would be loathsome and worthy of no respect.

Make or Break

This is it, this is the pivot point in which you can go from the Gamma mentality to the Delta mentality and perhaps even eventually beyond, which is admitting you are wrong and that you don’t know things. Once again, don’t just breeze through this point, but live it. Accept it. It is much more difficult than the average Gamma can even imagine and it will be terribly painful adjustment. It is shedding the skin of protective dishonesty, without which you will be more vulnerable to start with, but eventually much stronger. Some of you reading this post won't be able to make this journey with us. I can hear the Gamma wheels spinning now:  “I’m not really like that… he’s full of shit and wishes he was an Alpha… I don’t agree with something he wrote so it’s all invalid… this is just out-of-control masculinity… he’s not being Christ like in his attitude…”, and so on. To you I offer no consolation, only this advice: Enjoy your life as a Gamma. I don’t mean this as an insult, but rather don’t obsess over your inability to go beyond what you are, and let it ruin you completely. Don’t let “what could have been” be a cloud over your existence, but rather take what you’ve been given and make the most of it.

I have sympathy here for the Gamma attempting to cross this chasm on what looks like a frayed rope bridge, but it must be done, and it will be painful at times. Be prepared for the other Gammas you meet online and in person to pounce on your admittance to not knowing something, or to being wrong. Some of them will try to shout it like headline news. They will seize upon it, they will remember it, and they will try to use it against you, possibly forever. They are contemptible and you will find, as you leave being a Gamma, that you will have to leave your Gamma friends and acquaintances behind. A very righteous anger will grow in you against men who cannot forgive, cannot forget, and lie all of the time about themselves while always being ready to point out the slightest flaws in others. The fists that ball up in your hands at this behavior are normal, and good. Men should be outraged at this conduct; you should be furious that a liar uses good (admittance of wrong) to do evil in order to make themselves look better.

The good news is that everyone but Gammas understands this and will respect you more for taking this step. Women will admire you much more, and even a low Delta will silently nod his head, be your friend, and have respect for you when you own up to your intellectual shortcomings. This is normal behavior for men who are not Gammas. Don’t expect a parade for this behavior, though, or even a pat on the back very often, just don’t be surprised when someone appreciates your candor and gives you respect for it. What you are doing is moving from a world of darkness and lies into the light of truth. Believe me, it is a much better world. It is so much better that you cannot imagine it while you are still a Gamma.  

If you are ready to make this leap, then don’t just think about it, act upon it. Look for the next legitimate opportunity to admit you don’t know something when asked, admit that you are truly ignorant about the subject, and admit that you are wrong (using those very words!) when shown to be so. It probably won’t take very long to find the opportunity. In the next part, I’m going to give you some tools to help you on your way, and some examples of how to do this in life.