Disclaimation (I)

I am a young man and I have made a lot of mistakes. Before writing this volume, I thought it important to disclaim a few things. I am only twenty-six years old. In response to this truth, a Mastodon friend replied, “I'm laughing at you and the best part is you won't truly understand why, in any deep and meaningful way, for another 20 years.” (All I’d told him was that I was writing an advice book for young men.) I must acknowledge that - from any reasonable perspective - my quantity of wisdom is significantly less than that of the average human being, considering the median age of all human beings was just over 29 years old in 2015.[1] It is more likely than not that revisiting this book just five or ten years in the future will make me cringe fatally. Selflessly, I have invested in it anyway. I grew up mostly middle-class in the middle of America, with regular exposure to working class life and challenges. I am exposed too regularly to men 15-30 who exist in all apparent obliviousness to themselves and how the rest of humanity perceives them. They wear t-shirts and athletic shorts on dates with female counterparts who have spent an hour at minimum prepping themselves, aesthetically. They cling publicly to heroes with hopelessly-abstract worldviews containing hopelessly-juvenile ideas. Modern male institutions flood their brand images with a general emphasis on confidence and independence despite of- oblivious to the complete lack of cultural challenge to their concept of personal masculinity from anyone at all (much less anyone in power.) While I may joke about this book being the Holy Bible II, I think it is important that I first address the real scope of my authority – both to the extent I personally measure and that which you should as the reader. I have very specifically endeavored to avoid giving advice which I myself definitively do not follow. In the interest of full disclosure, it should be acknowledged that I began this book in the same year which my driver’s license was suspended after I very drunkenly rear-ended a car one December night and then hit another parked vehicle after fleeing because I had allowed my insurance to expire, further exasperating the state of extreme depression I had already existed in. I dispensed most of the advice in this self-helpish work from my 70-year-old mother’s basement, who was supporting me entirely. That considered, I have done my best to avoid hypocrisy, and I hope you will find little of it. If you do – and/or if you are unsatisfied with this book in any other way, please feel free to harass me publicly and demand a refund. (My contact information is printed in the pages just preceding this preface.) Likely out of vanity, I also think it important that I disclaim the nature of this book as an almost entirely non-academic work. I have zero formal training in psychology, sociology, or any culture studies, whatsoever, nor even any particular interest in cultural commentary. From my perspective, this frees me from a great amount of effort in research that probably wouldn’t have resulted in any grandiose insight, anyway. I do hope you will find some unique ideas here, or (more likely) some entertainment. At best, I hope to stand entirely distinct from wellness culture and the writing it produces. Else, I’m afraid the effort on both of our respective parts will have been entirely wasted. I would also like to make it clear that this book is not intended as A Guide to Living Exactly Like David Blue, nor should its function necessitate that you admire, respect, or regard me at all positively. If I have composed it correctly, even the most vicious, diehard archenemies of David Blue should find something worthwhile within these pages. It is a virtual certainty that I wrote this book for largely self-serving purposes, but I promise it wouldn’t have happened if I had worked without a genuine desire to better somebody’s life. You know the classical justification, here… Regardless of how realistic the endeavor may be, I hope to spare at least a single soul from at least a one of my adolescent male mistakes.

[1] According to Ourworldindata.Org.#legacy #archive