Self-Portrait of a Gamma

In which a man's SSH status is conclusively identified

In his paper exposing Friedrich Nietzsche as a fraud, Miles Mathis confirmed what I had previously observed concerning his socio-sexual status. I have emphasized the key phrase quoted below.

A man who asserts himself is a pig and a man who doesn't is a wimp, so you can't win. She can't win, and she never did, ending up alone, begging for death.

You will say I am alone at 60, so I must have done the same thing. No, since I was perfectly willing to share power with a woman. I just never met a woman who was anywhere near my equal who had time for me or would treat me well. In general they were all too into themselves to even notice I existed.

Despite always having a lot of ambition and a lot of irons in the fire, I have always had plenty of time for a woman and a relationship. It was a very high priority. The reverse has not been true. For me it was cherchez la femme. But for them it was also cherchez la femme, the femme being themselves.

And to be fair, there were a couple who slipped through my hands, for what are mysterious reasons.

We all have our Marikas and Alexandras, who we look back on as what-ifs. Those who came and went before we even had time to assess them. For that reason I am pretty sure this was my destiny, a destiny I now accept. I do believe in free will and I don't believe in pre-destination, but I do believe in destiny, which isn't quite the same. Nothing is pre-ordained and it could have very easily happened otherwise.

I could have failed, and I think the odds were actually very good I would fail. But this was my destiny in that it was what I was put here to do. There was no guarantee I would do it, but the road was open if I should do it. The help was there if I asked for it. And there may be some amount of steering going on as well, though I don't think it amounts to predestination. It is still up to us to agree to be steered or not, in each case—especially in my case, where I know I am being steered.

“They were all too into themselves to even notice I existed.”

That single line might well serve as the despairing hearts-cry of the Gamma male.

First, it’s not even remotely surprising that Mathis idolized Nietzsche, as he admits at the beginning of the expose. If there is one reliable sign of having strong Gamma tendencies, it is harboring a high regard for that particular German philosopher. And yes, we’re looking right at you, Jordan B. Peterson.

Second, serial failure with women is the unfortunate fate that awaits every proud Gamma who habitually overrates his own sexual and marital market values. It’s not that women are too into themselves to notice him, it’s that he is aiming far too high. The women he is pursuing simply aren’t buying what he has to offer.

Now, Miles is no midwit; for all his intellectual grandiosity he is legitimately smarter than the average observer of the human condition. But despite his observable brainpower and his legitimate painter’s eye, he lacked the self-awareness and the detachment to understand that what he valued in himself was not necessarily valued in the same way, or to the same extent, by the women to whom he was attracted.

Self-portrait by Miles Mathis

Miles is not a bad-looking man. He clearly has a tremendous appreciation for female beauty and was drawn to it from a young age. He just as obviously has a strong Gamma behavioral pattern, and is particularly given to grandiosity. He has the usual persecution complex, which, given his talent, is probably based in at least some degree of reality, and what appears to be an unusually powerful delusion bubble that prevents him from accepting criticism, no matter how constructive.

I don’t know Miles and have only exchanged email with him once. But he strikes me as an all-too-typical example of the Gamma who reliably wastes his intelligence and his talent on obsessively protecting his own feelings. Miles is far more talented than I am, far more observant than I am, and he may even be a little more intelligent than me, but it is clear that he has been fundamentally crippled by his own self-obsessions.

The root of his life-long failure with women is contained in that one fatal phrase: “I just never met a woman who was anywhere near my equal who had time for me.” Of course he didn’t! Because women are hypergamous, the only women who will ever have time for a man are those who consider him to be their superior! And remember, because value is subjective, a woman’s metrics will always be different from the metrics of a man, and in most cases, they will also be opaque to him.

Miles has always had an eye for female beauty… but notice the similarity of this painting of a young woman to his own self-portrait.

The man who seeks a woman who is equal is not looking for a woman, he is merely a narcissist seeking the opportunity to stare at himself in a mirror.