A Ticking Time Bomb

40 year old Hugh Jackman was just named the “sexiest man alive” by People magazine.

What are the odds that a 40 year old will be named the sexiest woman alive? (Yes, 42 year old Halle Berry was named sexiest woman by Esquire magazine, but who really doubts that she was more attractive at 22?) Scarlett Johansen, at 23, is a much better pick.

This illustrates a simple concept: It is women, not men, who have a biological clock that is ticking like a time bomb. Women are fertile for a shorter period of their lives than men are.

According to nature, it is better for women to look screamingly hot (admittedly not a scientific term) for a short period of time, than to look good for a long period of time.

This leads me to the ripoff that is marriage. Men marry for sex with a young, beautiful woman, while women marry for access to a man's resources. In the typical marriage-to-the-death scenario, the man loses out.

A 22 year old woman I know is engaged. She is very sexy, in large part just due to her age. At 22, her estrogen levels are at their peak, and estrogen is responsible for a great deal of feminine beauty, such as skin tone and hourglass shape. (For instance, menopausal women have lower levels of estrogen, and rapidly put on weight.)

As attractive as she is now, she is at her physical peak. She has a large curvy butt, which drives men (like me) crazy, but how sexy will she be at 40, when she's put on weight on her butt and hips, and her skin is not so smooth or taut? She is on the downhill slope.

Her husband on the other hand, does not have such a short window of attractiveness. Furthermore, each year that works, his status and economic power increase.

So the man marries a woman who becomes less desirable each year, while a woman marries a man who becomes sexually more appealing as well as wealthier. Eventually a man reaches a point where he is fertile, but his wife is not. At a point in his life when he is capable of starting a new family, he is stuck in a marriage with an aging hag.

No one ever really thinks of it, but I have seen dumpy women with short hair that only accentuates their fatness and age. You would not screw one of these women at gunpoint, yet they are wearing expensive clothing and drive late model SUV's. Now what sane guy would be these crones anything? These worn drabs are still cashing in on the fact that they were attractive, perhaps only marginally so, 20 nor 30 years ago, and some dumbass is still paying for it.

Fool's Gold and the Pyramid

When you read all of the get-rich-quick books, all of the wealth books, all of the guys in tuxedos leaning on a Porsche selling “Make Money Like I Did” programs, they are all based on a single premise: The answer in your life comes from moving to the top of the pyramid.

The median American income in 2007 was $48,000. If you earn $48,000 dollars, half of Americans make less than you do, and the other half makes more. Only 19% of American households earn $100,000 or more.

Statistically, the odds are against you. Keep in mind, that if you're moving up, and trying to move up, so is everyone else.

In the California Gold Rush, the real money wasn't made by prospectors, but by those supplied prospectors. Levi Strauss, Girardelli chocolates, and Wells Fargo, are examples of companies that struck gold not by getting dirty, but by supplying those who were. The real money is in feeding gold fever, wherein a hardworking drudge will do anything to crawl his way up from the bottom of the pyramid.

And then as now, prostitutes (both sexual and moral whores) made a killing.

This is the appeal of Amway and multi-level marketing, as well Mammoth Widgets, Inc. --peons will work much harder when “the dream” is dangled in front of them, much harder than they will work for simple wages. It's the concept of work as a 40 hour a week lottery ticket that just might pay off some day in untold riches.

Here's an idea: What if the answer is NOT in moving to the top of the pyramid? What if you could earn a median income, but live like you're filthy rich? For $48,000 a year, you could live like a king in the Philippines. You'd have a live-in maid and so many young women that you'd have to pop Viagra like Skittles just to keep up.

In fact, you could still live very well for $24,000 a year in the Philippines.

This idea of leveraging your earning power by automating your income and going overseas is the principal theme of The Four Hour Workweek.

On the face of it, it seems like a much more realistic approach to real wealth and happiness than trying to claw your way to the top of the pyramid.

Viagra --New Wonder Drug?

Mexico City is going to start giving away free Viagra to elderly men. Are they on to something?

I have been reading “The Hardness Factor,” by Dr. Steven Lamm, in which he makes the case that the quality of a man's erections (which we might refer to as “sexual health”) are directly related to a man's overall physical health. Since an erection is a product of a man's circulatory and nervous system, poor cardiovascular health and nerve damage that cause poor erections or an inability to get an erection are signs not of isolated sexual problems, but of much larger health problems.

According to a Canadian study, 90% of men with heart problems and erectile dysfunction experienced erection difficulties 3 years before they hard any symptoms of coronary disease. This is the main idea of The Hardness Factor –erection difficulties are signs of much larger health problems, such as diabetes and heart disease.

There is also the study that men with more frequent ejaculations are less likely to get prostate cancer.

It has become clear to me now that Christian way of thinking, in which sex is relegated to a separate world of sin and shame, is wrong. Christianity has the idea that you can be a normal, healthy person, with your sexuality in the permanent “off” mode.

When I was a teenage fundamentalist Christian, it was taught that smoking, drugs, and drinking alcohol were sinful because they harmed your body. But there were plenty of fat people in church, and a couple who were morbidly obese, but that was just fine. No problem here!

I work with a Christian man who—despite the fact that he's a great guy-- is obese and has diabetes, a condition that Lamm calls “diabesity.” Being diabetic and grossly overweight makes one a walking metabolic train wreck, and you're waltzing with the Grim Reaper unawares. If you're going to have to be buried in an oversized coffin, you're likely to need that coffin sooner than later. Christianity is just fine with an obese, sloppy man, with diabetes, high blood pressure, and who couldn't have sex if his life depended on it, which it does, in fact.

Viagra; Super Drug?

Rather than rush out and treat erectile difficulties with Viagra or other drugs, Dr. Lamm rightly points out that a guy should treat the underlying problem of increased weight, poor cardiovascular health, high LDL cholesterol levels, and a life on the couch, up to your elbows in a super size bag of Cheetos.

There is gathering evidence that Viagra and other sexual performance drugs may be life savers. Keep in mind that Viagra was developed as a heart medication, and its sexual effects were only accidentally discovered. Viagra is used to treat pregnant women with high blood pressure and to ward off jet lag. In one study, cyclists taking Viagra improved their performance by 40%!

For men with erectile dysfunction, one study showed that Viagra reduced the risk of heart attack by one third. Lamm says that evidence is beginning to show that sexual performance drugs have heart and circulatory benefits, and “will commonly be used in the near future as heart medicines.”

Out of Egypt

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The problem with being at the bottom of the pyramid is that the lives of men at the top (the Alpha Males) is so drastically different from those at the bottom (the Beta Males.)

Let us consider a DUI arrest for both an Alpha and Beta Male.

The guy at the top of the pyramid has a lawyer who has evidence thrown out. The Alpha CEO knows an Alpha lawyer, who in turn knows the Alpha judge. In fact they've probably all met on the golf course. The CEO gets a fine, which he can pay easily, and performs “community service.”

If this sounds far fetched, my father was a California Highway Patrolman who investigated a case of a drunk driving fatality. A young man was driving drunk and wrecked his car, killing the passenger in the front passenger seat. It seems like an open and shut case, right? The driver is looking at prison for vehicular manslaughter.

Well the drunk driver is the son of wealthy parents, who hire a professor to testify in court. (Keep in mind that lawyer's fees are so high that few people can afford to go to trial.) The professor argues that the wealthy survivor of the crash was not in fact the driver, but the passenger. He further contends that the impact of the collision caused the two bodies to be thrown around and to switch places!

The end result is that the wealthy young guy gets off scott free, when in similar circumstances you or I would have been in prison for years.

The differences between Alpha and Beta male are huge. Alpha males not only get preferential treatment, but all the “justice” money can buy, more money, better benefits, and all of the women worth having.

The irony is that all of the Beta Male's efforts to improve his situation, whether working longer hours, putting in more time, becoming more of a “team player,” etc., merely solidify the Alpha Male status of those at the top.

The solution is: you must see the pyramid for what it is. Whether the pyramid is the corporation you work for, the church you belong to, the club or organization you belong to (e.g. Elks, Rotary, Habitat for Humanity, etc.), your efforts to work your way up to the top will not only never get you there, but they merely enrich those at the top.

Knowing this, if you are in a pyramid, keep your investment to a minimum. While you go through the motions of being the ideal employee, you are not kidding yourself about reality. You are not volunteering for anything, unless it will benefit you at some point in the future. You are not going to run furiously on the treadmill because now they are dangling two peanuts instead of just one. You are not sucked in by the hype, the promise of future riches.

Start your own business and work part time on it. Moonlight doing something in your area of expertise. Start your own pyramid. Found your own church.

Suppose you are out on a date. Your expertise is web page design. At some point in the date you will inevitably, invariably, immutably get the Ambition Test if she is interested in you.

“So, Bob, where do you see yourself 5 years from now?” “Where are you at in your career?” “What are your goals?” “Where do you work?” This is a mine field, and for years I blew this, because like a dumbass I didn't even realize I was being tested.

You can answer, “I'm a low-level schmuck at Big Biz Inc.”

Or you can answer, “I've started my own webpage design business, and someday I'll be bigger than Big Biz Inc.”

Which answer is more likely to get you laid?

Breaking free of the pyramid means your freedom, the ability to set your own hours, to set your own rules, to get women, and to become rich. Even if you never become a megastar, at least your efforts will not be stripped from you to enrich someone else. You will be spared the agony of developing a crush on your young, hot coworker, deluding yourself into thinking she likes you, only to discover that she is screwing the boss even though he's already married and is a callous, hard-charging bastard.

Pyramid Schemes, continued

Are you a part of a pyramid scheme? Don't be too sure you're not.

One defense that multi-level marketers (e.g. the Amway zombies, etc.) will make is that “all corporations are pyramids.” This means there is a leader or leaders at the top, then a few more senior executives with less power at lower salaries, and underneath them are middle management, and so on, with the largest number of the lowest paid, most disempowered employees at the bottom.

This is true. Most corporations are pyramids, as are many churches. Think of it, there's a pastor at the top, then an associate pastor or two, followed by elders, then deacons, and so on. At the very bottom of the pyramid is the single largest group, the chump churchgoer. If that sounds harsh, I've been the chump churchgoer, doing menial chores in the shadow of a celebrity pastor who was making more than twice my salary, tax free.

As I see it, these are the characteristics of the pyramid:

A single or handful of leaders are at the top of the organization.

A mass of followers and members are at the bottom of the organization.

There is a disparity in income, power, and status between top and bottom.

The efforts of those at the bottom benefit those at the top.

A person's chances of moving from the bottom to the top are illusory. (The game is rigged.)

People work harder than they otherwise would (put in extra hours, volunteer work, pay for things out of their own pockets, give up weekends, take dangerous work,etc.) because they overestimate their ability to move upwards.

For a woman, being part of the pyramid is no problem. She can sleep or marry her way to the top (which is the same thing). Supported by a boyfriend, husband, or similar rube, she can work part-time, turn down the promotion or transfer, or use her sex appeal to have men do her work for her. She can marry and drop out of the pyramid, then re-enter as she sees fit.

For a man, to be a part of the pyramid is to volunteer for a lifetime of slavery, with no hope of Moses killing your Egyptian slave master. Remember the woman who coasts through her tenure at the pyramid? Coming and going as she pleases, taking assignments that suit her, dropping out and in, all the while benefiting because of her “minority” status? Some dumbass in the pyramid is going to pick up her tab, and return home from a hellish day hauling several ton blocks of stone up the pyramid, to find himself waving a palm frond to cool some spoiled would-be Cleopatra reclining on a couch and popping grapes into her mouth.

Our pyramid slave will spend his entire life working to build a tribute to another man, constructing a monument to cast a slavedriver and exploiter of the first order as a god. The pyramid slave will feel scars from the whip spread across his back, like vines on a crumbling rock. But he'll go back, day after day, because someday he'll sit in the shade and drink from the gold cup. In the end he has his tongue cut out and he's buried alive with the pharaoh.

Oops. I spent my whole life on an illusion.

Next: The Way Out