Best-Of Advice

On self-worth and acceptance

All my life I’ve been told I’m gorgeous and talented. Modeling contracts, Ivy League college, NYC, Paris, Milan, LA. Now I’m 40 and have no self love and a string of failed relationships. I’ve tried everything: therapy, drugs, sobriety, vision quests, psychics, celibacy, meditation, reading all the books, whatever. I’m no closer to accepting that soon, “pretty” will run out, and then what will I have going for me? Point me in the right direction, please.

 

Your relationships didn’t fail. They simply ran their course, and the part of you that believes you were a failure in love is the same part of you that believes your value as a human being is directly tied to an arbitrary beauty standard you happened to meet in your youth.

I can’t point you in the right direction. There is no direction. There’s nothing out there that you can smoke, seek, fuck, find, or read that will suddenly give you the self-love and acceptance you’re so desperate to discover.

You wanna know why? Because all those things you tried were just different flavors of the same old broken-souled search for external validation. All that bullshit, and it still never occurred to you that the only thing you ever had to do was forgive yourself.

Just fucking forgive yourself. Let go. That shit was never yours. It didn’t belong to you. The beauty and the talent and the hubris and the superiority — they were all someone else’s idea of you, and they felt so good for so long, you made them a part of your identity. It was all a fucking fiction, and you can just let it all go. It’s okay, really. Have a good cry, shake it off, and then forgive yourself.

Keep forgiving yourself, and keep rejecting every instinct you have to seek external validation until one day you wake up and realize that you are worthy.

You’re worthy of love. You’re worthy of acceptance. You’re just plain inherently worthy. Trust me, you don’t even know the meaning of real freedom until you finally discover what internally validated self-worth feels like.

All you gotta do is let go.

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Fun-Sized Advice

On fun-sized advice

Are you as fucking sick of this “Cool” Pope shit as I am? Congratulations your organization advanced into the early 20th century.
Meh. I don’t mind the cool pope. I mean sure, the Catholic Church is a grotesquely evil institution that spreads ignorance and fear throughout the globe, but as long as we gotta have a pope, I’d rather him be a progressive liberal. (Relatively, of course.)

Can you help me articulate why I feel blinding anger when, after doing something unprofessional and shitty, my boss apologizes and says, “Are we cool?” and if I don’t say “Yes,” he pouts? What is the exact phrase for the manipulative bullshit he is pulling?
He’s not apologizing. He’s trying excuse himself, and he’s demanding your complicity. Real apologies don’t come with emotional strings attached.

I said I wanted to be the one called instead of doing the calling. He said he’d call. He hasn’t. Do I call, which feels like caving, or do I read the subtext and let it go, which feels like giving up?
Take the fucking hint.

You mentioned that Bernie Sanders has a legitimate chance of winning the White House. Do you think the same is true for Trump? Does this worry you at all?
No. Bush is gonna win the Republican nomination.

Why the fuck are Republicans so determined to shut down Planned Parenthood anyway? Do they not understand that they’re alienating even their own voting base? Are they seriously so anti-women that they want to keep us from getting cancer screenings? What could they possibly gain from this?
They’re not alienating their base. They’re catering to it. America is full of selfish, bible-banging halfwits who genuinely believe that defunding Planned Parenthood is a righteous cause.

What do you think about the niqab?
Well, it’s certainly not for me, and I don’t recommend it for tanning.

Is your ego really dead?
No, but I kill it whenever I can.

How can I stop being bitter when the world is full of such shitty things?
You don’t have to fill yourself with the shitty things.

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Thoughts

On Chomsky and Harris

Noam Chomsky vs Sam Harris. Any thoughts?

I respect Harris for trying to open a dialog, and Chomsky certainly handled the exchange poorly, but the old man is nevertheless correct.

In a nutshell, Harris suggests that intentions matter when assessing the morality of a given geo-political outcome, and that Chomsky unwisely ignores intentions. Chomsky suggests that Harris is naive about “benign” intentions, and that on the world stage, only outcomes matter.

As an example, Chomsky would not make a moral distinction between the US accidentally killing a dozen children in a drone strike and ISIS deliberately killing a dozen children with a car bomb. On the other hand, Harris very much wants to make that moral distinction. That’s his whole point in starting the conversation. He believes that those identical outcomes would not be equal, and that the US would somehow be morally superior because of the intentionality of the deaths.

Harris’s position is attractive. At first glance, it certainly “feels” right, but that’s just a trick in how he frames his position. It’s fine to talk about the moral intentions of individuals, but his argument ultimately fails because the concept of intentionality doesn’t scale-up to the systemic level of state power.

In other words, it’s perfectly legitimate to suggest that President Obama is morally superior to Abu al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS, but so what? The US has visited far more atrocity onto the world than ISIS could ever hope to commit, and the fact that the President is a good guy has almost nothing to do with the intention of the US military industrial complex as a whole. Essentially, Harris is trying to make a systems-level “good guys vs bad guys” type argument, and Chomsky has no patience for that kind of bullshit.

To his credit, Harris is right that not all cultures are at the same stage of moral development, but for some reason, he has a blind spot when it comes to the systemic violence inherent to Western state powers, (specifically the US and Israel.) Harris assumes there is a certain benevolence of good intentions with regard to Western state actors, and Chomsky simply refuses to accept his premise.

Put as simply as possible, Chomsky thinks systemically about culture, whereas Harris thinks culturally about systems, and their conversation failed miserably because they got into an academic dick measuring contest.

Oh well.

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Advice

On another bunch of books

Can you post some more book recommendations? You’ve already given me two of my all time favorite books (“Shock Doctrine” and “Veronika decides to die”).

 

Yep. It’s September, and like clockwork, you guys are asking me for books again. Here’s the latest snapshot of what’s on my bookshelf. As always, it’s a mixed bag. There should be a little something here for everyone:

The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante

Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

Sapiens: A History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

Purity by Jonathan Franzen

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig

The Terrorist’s Dilemma: Managing Violent Covert Organizations by Jacob Shapiro

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II by Denise Kiernan

Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief by Lawrence Wright

Bitch Planet #1 by Deconnick & De Landro

A Renegade History of the United States by Thaddeus Russell

Lost in the Cosmos by Walker Percy

Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion by Sam Harris

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Best-Of Advice

On the concept of a soul

Serious question: what are souls?

It really depends on who you ask. Asking for a person’s soul concept is like asking for their god concept. The definition varies wildly according to a person’s individual belief system, and it’s usually tied to a bunch of metaphysical nonsense bought wholesale from a religion during childhood.

Generally speaking, a person will define their soul as the qualitative variable they need to balance out the equation of their own mortality.

For instance, the average American simpleton might define their soul by saying something like, “my soul is the part of me that will go to heaven when I die.” The average skeptic clinging onto dualism might say something like, “my soul is my spiritual essence separate from my body.” Atheists who practice transcendental meditation might say, “my soul is the part of me left over when my mind is silent.” Materialists flirting with Buddhism might say, “there is no soul, and yet we are reborn from nothing.” Hipsters into existential nihilism might tell you that soul is just Aretha Franklin on vinyl.

You get the point. The soul concept is basically there to cancel out whatever existential dread is built into their personal belief system.

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Advice

On having nothing to be ashamed of

I used to be a call girl when I was at college. I live in my small hometown and ‘a friend’ told a guy she was seeing who told everyone. I feel so ashamed, I don’t want to go outside or go to work. I can’t move away for at least 3 months, what advice do you have on how to ride it out?

You have nothing to be ashamed of, so fuck ’em. Simply be shameless. I know that’s easier said than done, but you’re tough — you’re a strong woman — and perhaps most importantly, you didn’t do anything wrong.

Hold your head high, babe. Turn the shame back around on any small-minded asshole who throws you a side-eye. Hit ’em with brazen self-respect, and don’t put up with a single ounce of judgmental bullshit.

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Best-Of Advice

On magical jesus baby souls

I am pro-choice. But when those pro-lifers start banging on about abortion being murder and “your choice? what about the child’s choice?”- I hesitate… maybe due to years of religious brainwashing.

Help me be smarter about this?

 

When religious wingnuts chant on about how “life begins at conception,” what they’re really expressing is their ridiculous belief that White Jesus up in sunny heaven reaches down into every woman’s uterus the very instant that a sperm fertilizes an egg and magically imbues the resulting single-celled zygote with a fully formed human soul.

They really truly believe this, and you will never convince them otherwise, and that’s why this is a dumb-fuck religious issue instead of a pragmatic scientific one.

Here’s the thing, though. There is no Jesus. There is no magic. There is no soul. THERE IS NO CHILD.

More to the point, a zygote isn’t a child. It’s just a clump of cells. Same goes for an embryo, as it’s just a slightly bigger clump. Hell, a mid-term fetus still isn’t a child, even though it kind of looks like a squishy one. Only when we start talking about later-term fetuses that are viable outside the womb can anyone start making a rational argument that it’s a child, but post-viabilty abortions aren’t even an option unless the mother’s health is at risk.

So, why is any of this still controversial? Because babies are cute and make people emotional and America is full of half-wits who believe in magical Jesus baby souls.

That’s why you hesitate, because there’s enough irrational static out there to make you feel like somehow an innocent child is involved, but there isn’t, because THERE IS NO CHILD.

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Fun-Sized Advice

On fun-sized advice

Why am I so afraid to be mad at my boyfriend?
You are mad at him. You’re afraid of something else.

I had sex with a sleazy guy in the bathroom at a party 10 minutes after meeting him. It didn’t hurt anyone, so why do I feel so shitty about it?
Because that’s what you’ve been programmed to feel.

Do you get better at choosing people as you go on? This year’s been full of getting burned by people I trusted.
You only get better at it if you actually change how you choose them.

I’m terrified of taking medication for depression because I’m afraid that I won’t ever be able to do without it. Is that a thing that can happen? I can’t ask a doctor, I really don’t think they’d be honest with me.
Okay, but you can ask a doctor. You should, actually. If possible, ask more than one, and don’t be afraid to ask direct questions. They’re not gonna lie to you. (I appreciate that you trust me, but don’t let your anxiety prevent you from getting the treatment that you need.)

I miss him so much that I cry myself into a half-sleep every night. But it’s been a month since we broke up, and I have shit to do. How can I speed up the process?
You can’t, but that’s no excuse not to get your shit done.

Is refusing to shower a justifiable reason for ending a friendship? His whole house smells like his feet but all my other friends adore him.
It’s a justifiable reason to not go over to his house. If that ends the friendship, it’s not on you.

What does it mean when a guy doesn’t want to get into a relationship with you because he doesn’t want to disappoint you?
It means he doesn’t want to be in a relationship with you.

What happens when everything is on point but the attraction?
Friendship. (Or disaster.)

What do you prefer to be called when you’re a domme?
You assume I even give permission to speak.

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Advice

On banging your head against reality

In one of your past pieces of advice, you say that men in their 3os, 40s, 5os and beyond are generally only interested in women 10-20 years younger than them. You have said that as women, we should just accept that that is the way things are rather than letting it bother us, and that we need to either accept the fact that we’ll be dating older men or “lower our standards.” This sounds so entirely fucked to me. Maybe you and I just have different ideas of what a low-standard dude looks like. To me, the kind of dude who is exclusively interested in much younger women is the kind of dude I’d have to lower my standards to date, regardless of his money or status. Any dude who genuinely views women as equals would not balk at the idea of dating an age-appropriate woman. I’m having a hard time understanding why you think privilege-soaked dirty old manbabies are who we should be settling for, because “that’s just how men are.” That strikes me as no different from accepting that a dude shouldn’t do his own laundry or change a diaper because “that’s just how men are.” Fuck that.  There are definitely plenty of dudes out there dating age-appropriate women. Maybe not in the elite SoCal circles you frequent, but in the rest of America, it is happening. When you reference “standards” do you actually mean “status?” Because sure, most high-status dudes might gravitate toward barely legal arm candy, but that doesn’t make them quality men.

When I say standards, I mean standards. When I say status, I mean status, and the reason you’re having such a hard time understanding what I think is because you’re the type who insists on bringing your own box of wine to the party.

You’ve misinterpreted (and embellished) quite a lot of what I was saying. It’s not deliberate or anything. You’re just too busy banging your head against reality to effectively hear my point.

The truth of men dating younger women has nothing to do with whether men view women as equals. It has to do with the dating options available to them, and I’m sorry if it frustrates you, but the more attractive and successful a man is, the greater his options, and the more likely he is to date younger and more attractive women. Is this good and right? That’s an ethical question, and completely irrelevant to the fact that things are the way they are.

I get that you’re angry with the kind of world we live in, but hurling denial against double standards won’t make them go away.

Oh, and for the record, THIS IS EXACTLY THE KIND OF SHIT YOU SHOULD BE POSTING IN THE COMMENTS INSTEAD OF SENDING ME AS A SUBMISSION.

Thanks.

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Advice

On guilt and shame

I fucked up and I do feel bad and I realize I should feel bad. Still, attaching “I wouldn’t have expected this from you of all people” every time something like this happens feels manipulative to me. Am I just seeing ghosts here?

You’re not seeing ghosts. This is just you having different reactions to guilt and shame.

Guilt is realizing you should feel bad and then feeling bad, which you seem to accept. You’re okay with feeling guilty and accepting guilt. Shame, on the other hand, is someone saying “I wouldn’t have expected this from you of all people.” You’re not okay with feeling shame and being shamed. (And yes, shame is a tool people can use to manipulate, which is why it feels manipulative to you.)

Feeling guilt means you have a conscience, and that’s a good thing. Recognizing that shame might be manipulation means you’ve got a bullshit detector, and that’s also a good thing.

You want to be a person fully capable of feeling guilty. Guilt is a necessary component for a strong moral compass. What you don’t want to be is a person who is too easily shamed. Personally, I consider shamelessness to be a virtue when it’s tempered with thoughtfulness and grace.

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