The Viable Alternative

If you haven’t heard about Andrew Tate, let me briefly give a summary. He’s a biracial, British-American (or American British), former kickboxing champ, multi-millionaire entrepreneur, international playboy that was the most Googled man in the planet back in 2022 for his incendiary, polarizing remarks about women, dating, relationships, men, “the Matrix,” politics, religion and current affairs.

He was one of the casualties of “cancel culture” when, in August of last year, he was banned across all social media outlets and also by Airbnb, Uber, Stripe, and Twitch. Currently, he’s been held in detention in Romania for over 60 days with his brother, Tristan, while investigations are pending for allegations made against him by two women for sex trafficking but has still not been charged with anything.

If you don’t know about who he is, I would suggest you take one of the following two courses of action.

• The first would be to look up his name on YouTube and watch the different shorts and clips about him where he gives his opinion about certain issues and watch your response. If you get triggered, and decide that you immediately dislike him, take note of that. Then Google him and read what some of the news outlets have to say about him and again ask yourself how you feel about him. Then, go watch a long form interview with him where the interviewer gets into an depth discussion with him about his life and his views. The PBD Podcast (Patrick Bet-David) would be a great place to start but there are a few others. Also watch the video Tate made in response to being canceled. After watching these videos, take note if you still have the same opinion of him or if it changed somewhat. If it did change, then ask yourself the role the media plays influencing your decisions and the narratives they like to paint to colour your perceptions on issues.
• The other course of action is to go directly to at least one long form video with him (I again suggest the PBD Podcast) and then watch the other video he made when he got canceled. After that, go and watch all the clips floating around about him on YouTube and Instagram and then Google him and read some of the news articles that come up about him. Note the disparity between sensational headlines and clips and the actual truth and take note how the former influences your perception of the latter.

These two courses of action would hopefully get you to see that many of the issues that people are bashing each other’s heads over and drawing lines in the sand for aren’t black or white the way the media portrays them in order to divide people, rather they run in nuanced shades of gray.

And that what’s I’m about to give, my nuanced opinion in its shades of gray.

First of all, I would like to say that while I disagree with some of the things Andrew Tate says, I think overall he’s a net positive.

• He encourages men to become the best versions of themselves by getting in shape, being men of integrity, loyalty and honour, taking personal responsibility over their lives and becoming financially abundant. He talks about the importance of family.
• He encourages brotherhood among men.
• He encourages men to be a provider and protector of women.
• He warns about being mindful and aware about the programming of The Matrix that keeps people passive, lazy, depressed, out of shape and unhealthy.
• He also talks about the importance of having a purpose and warns against the pitfalls of pursuing hedonism because it’s an endless trap.
• On top of all that, he’s given many aimless men with no positive male role models direction and a will to live and has saved at least one guy from committing suicide.

The Delusion of Self Help

One of the problems I have with Andrew is a projection of the issues I have with the whole “self” help industry. From my own experience of being a recovering self help junkie, I believe that 90% of the self help industry is not about “self” help but actually about ego help. It teaches you how to build a strong ego that will protect you from your insecurities so you can become confident and successful.

However, TRUE self help teaches you how to tear down your ego so you can connect to your insecurities so you can feel and heal them, resulting in you connecting to your core self which is already confident and successful.

The person pursuing success from his ego will always be chasing it to fill an empty void created by his disconnection from his core self, while the person connected to his core self will create success from a place of fulfillment and wholeness.

To me, Andrew Tate represents the guy who created a life that he thought would protect him from the emotional pain he experienced in his past. Case in point, he shared a story about how his Dad, a chess grandmaster and a man he describes as a narcissist, would make him stay up till 6 am in the morning playing chess when he was eight years old because he came in second at a chess tournament. He said that he would cry to him mom about it and it was one of the things that led to his parents’ divorce. He talks about how he was grateful that his Dad was tough on him, but I can bet that there was a lot of unhealed pain from that experience that unconsciously affects him today.

He also talks about how he can’t sit still for too long and he always has to be working because he gets uncomfortable. What is this discomfort? Could it be some unaddressed emotional trauma that he self medicates by working? What would he uncover if he removed the “distraction” of work and sat with himself?

Andrew Tate’s meteoric rise to fame is PARTLY reflective of a broken, empty society that has no idea what true, authentic self esteem is because it has no idea of what the SELF really is.

Many men admire him because they see him as a symbol of high self esteem due to the fact that he’s good looking, wealthy, charismatic, dresses well, knows how to fight, is surrounded by an abundance of beautiful women, is in great shape, and has a fleet of exotic sports cars. While these qualities can be a by product of high self esteem, they are not synonymous with it and can be mutually exclusive. The true, core self has nothing to do with these things, but unfortunately many people who acquire wealth and status are also deluded into believing they have high self esteem because of these external factors that they confuse with the Self.

There’s many a miserable, self loathing, empty douchebag whose wealth and status make them the object of envy of many people.

If you’re a healthy, mature, masculine man who has some life experience and wisdom that gives you a healthy discerning eye, you’re well situated to taking Andrew Tate’s message in a constructive way by integrating the parts that are helpful to you becoming a better man while discarding the parts that you think are straight up fallacy or just don’t jibe with you.

However, if you’re a 19 year old INCEL (Involuntary Celibate) who lives in his mom’s basement, is afraid of and angry at the world, plays video games all day, resents women, and has never had any positive male role models, the danger is that Andrew Tate’s message, with little context from having a limited amount of life experience or a healthy understanding of masculinity, can definitely be taken the wrong way, resulting in the creation of a laughable caricature of masculinity.

Where I Disagree with Andrew Tate

This brings to mind the things I disagree with Andrew Tate about.

I disagree with him when he says that he doesn’t want any women he’s dating to have any male friends.

To me, if a woman is truly faithful, a male friend wouldn’t get in the way of that. It’s one thing to not allow your girl to spend the night at an ex boyfriend’s house which is a totally healthy boundary and reasonable expectation (BTW, if that is indeed an issue in your relationship, I strongly advise you to reconsider said relationship), but it’s a whole other thing when you refuse to let her have any male friends to prevent any possible infidelity. There are many women who have solid friendships with men that they have no sexual attraction to that they have met way before they knew their significant other.

Having a healthy boundary is one thing, but going into a relationship trying to enact measures to prevent the other person from cheating on you sets a bad foundation and smacks of unaddressed baggage from your own past.

I disagree with his whole view on the “body count” of a woman.

To me, as long as she wasn’t a hooker, or ran a train with 300 men, if the woman has a “high body count” (whatever that arbitrary number is), what’s more important is who she’s showing up as the present. If this supposedly high body count was the result of emotional wounds from the past, is she aware of them AND has she dealt with them? Is she faithful when in a relationship?

I disagree on his whole view on not wanting a woman to have too much “life experience.”

To this he meant that he’d rather be the first one to take his girl on a private jet and show her different places around the world, and he found it a turn off if she did that with someone else before she met him. This is why he said he preferred a young woman from the countryside with little life experience.

Everybody has their own preferences and a right to have them. However when you look closer at some preferences, it raises an eyebrow. If a person has any amount of depth as an individual, material possessions may have their initial allure and flair, but after awhile, it gets boring. I would hope I would have more to offer than just my wealth and possessions such as my life experiences, my wisdom, my presence, my intellect, my quirks, my vision, the treasures revealed from the depths of my soul and the person that I’m evolving into.

Also, what’s wrong with a woman coming with her own experiences with various things in life?

For me, it’s the experiences that a person has gone through that makes her interesting. It’s enjoyable to be able to relate to and find common ground through similar experiences while learning something new from experiences she’s had that I haven’t experienced yet. What’s even more attractive is if someone has been through something challenging and used the lessons to become a better, more whole person.

In my opinion, it’d be totally boring to be with someone who hasn’t experienced anything in life yet. What in the world is she bringing to the table beyond her looks and her “innocence?” I couldn’t be with someone like that because I wouldn’t be able to relate to her.

I also disagree with his whole win/lose attitude where he feels he has to be in constant competition with the next person to come out on top.

Now, I’m not one of those hippy socialists that think competition is bad. Competition is necessary to hone and sharpen your skills in business, in sports, in academia, and at times, in your career. However, when you’re carrying that attitude in all aspects of life all the time, I bet there’s some dysfunction there.

To me, the person that’s always trying to “win” in everything is trying to compensate for some inadequacy. The more secure, whole person is competing against his previous self to become a better stronger version. Instead of seeing the world as win/lose, as in “For me to win, someone has to lose, and if someone else wins, I lose,” he sees the world as “win/win” as in “I win, you win, and you win, I win.”

Finally, I disagree with his criticisms about therapy being a waste of time.

The right type of therapy can be very helpful and I think he can definitely use some of it. I also disagree with his over arching statements about men being better drivers and pilots than women, but then again, I think he was just trolling with those statements.

Why I Like Andrew Tate

Disagreements aside, I like Andrew Tate. You can like someone and still disagree with them on some things, and dislike someone and agree with some of the things they say, something that in this era of black and white thinking many people fail to grasp. I think the person we see on camera is a character he created to troll, polarize and grab attention to make himself go viral on social media, but behind the camera, he’s a solid, kindhearted, loyal, chill dude. Several people who I respect have said that he’s totally different when the camera’s not running and vouch for his upright character.

Although I said earlier that his message could be taken the wrong way by a man with little to no experience or maturity, it could also be very helpful for such individuals if taken the right way. If such a man, who, in addition to having no positive male role models, is mired in victimhood and riddled with guilt about being a man due to the programming of society, Tate’s message can inspire him to take responsibility in bettering himself, let go of the guilt and shame, and embark on a path to developing a healthy relationship to masculinity so he can be an asset to himself and society.

I admire the recent growth he’s made. I believe that through his recent transition from being an avowed atheist to a believer in God after claiming to witness the amount of evil he has, the realization that the pursuit of hedonism is a life sucking endless void, his losing the desire for any more material things because he’s already bought everything money can buy, and his current detainment, that God is using and preparing him for a bigger purpose of waking up and inspiring men and making people aware of the matrix. Yes, he may not be “perfect,” but God doesn’t use “perfect” people.

Despite being a flawed guy like the rest of us, Tate is a guy I could learn a whole lot from and would totally have in my corner. His organization for men, The War Room, seems like an asset for men and something I would be a part of.

This is The Viable Alternative.

Hope this helps,

Ike Love