Re: Living in seclusion and the woman question

2026-06-01

The following is an excerpt from a private exchange that unfolded over two rounds. I am sharing it with permission from my correspondent.

First round

When I see your content about living in the mountains of Cyprus, building your own house, working on your garden, taking pictures of yourself, building your life in seclusion, etc., one question that ALWAYS pops up in my mind is, “how’s he gonna do `marriage’?”, or “how a man living outside the city, in the mountains, by himself, ever does or ever going to satisfy one human need a man feels almost every day in the most intense way possible, which is sexual intimacy?”

[…]

You are living in the mountains, which sounds nice. But in return, from my point of view, you get none of these:

• woman
• money
• status

[…]

I guess my question is along the lines of, what’s your prospect of marriage, you think? Do you consider that never happening for you? Did you let go of this? If so, don’t you think you are letting go of a very intense part of “a man’s lived experience”, that is, sexuality, out of your life? Doesn’t this impoverish your life?

You are right. Living in a remote area means that I do not have access to women, money, and status.

• I have no interest in status. More importantly, I do not pay attention to what others think in general or think of me in particular. I act out of my own initiative.

• Money is relevant only to the extent that I cover my basic needs. Since I do not value status, this practically means that I do not have lots of material wants, such as fancy furniture, expensive cars, vacations in luxury resorts, et cetera. To be clear, I do not think those are inherently wrong: I simply am not drawn to them.

• For the purposes of our exchange here, a woman is interesting to me only if she wants to have children. She does not need to be beautiful, or smart, or an intellectual, or whatnot. Just have the disposition for children.

Based on those three you can already tell that me living in the mountains is not the main constraint.

I am poor and thus not attractive to any woman who cares about status and comfort more broadly. I will not put my heart into a career and so I diminish my chances of ever being financially secure. Adding to this, anybody who has checked my publications knows that I am not the kind of person who will be easy for an employer to control, which makes me practically unemployable (this is no mere theory of mine, as I have had prospective employers point out my strong independentist quality as a major downside for them).

I lived in much more densely populated areas and I even worked in highly social jobs with plenty of women. For me, it is easy to talk to people. Still, I never met a woman that I would start a family with. Of course, it could simply mean that I am not physically attractive (and I am definitely not attractive as a means for upward social mobility). But, again, the point is that the mountains are not the primary issue here.

Living in the mountains introduces a pre-filter. All women who seek money and status will not be living in this place or will be eager to leave. The only question mark is whether I can meet a woman who already lives here out of her own volition or who would actually want to relocate to this place. This has not happened and may never happen.

To your questions about marriage, I think that I will not get married. I will be 38 soon and was never close to getting married. There is no indication that a change will happen. It is something I came to terms with a long time ago and accepted it as part of my reality. This is why I even moved to the mountains to begin with. I am not disturbed by it and have no regrets. The mountains are beautiful, my wellness is optimal, and I feel as strong and capable as ever.

My attitude is to work with what I have and be grateful for it. I keep tending to my tasks without distractions and am happy. Wanting companionship for the sake of companionship is what makes one miserable: they place their worth as a person on another person’s favourable opinion—and opinions are fickle. Plus, having companionship for its own sake means that you are suppressing important aspects of your selfhood, which will inevitably break you in other ways.

Second round

PROT: You are right. Living in a remote area means that I do not have access to women, money, and status.

• I have no interest in status. More importantly, I do not pay attention to what others think in general or think of me in particular. I act out of my own initiative.

I find this interesting and borderline unbelievable. In my personal experience and observations about other people around me, also considering the basic psychology of mankind that I’ve read from evolutionary psychology books, the “status seeking” is a fundamental activity the man as a social animal conducts. So, I am inclined to say, surely you must also be seeking status albeit in a more veiled or not immediately apparent sense. For example, every hobby group, from Magic the Gathering trading card game players, to open source/free software development communities have unspoken of but observed “status” markers, holders, and plays. I think, in your case, you hold high status among the “emacs content creators”-sphere online. However, I don’t want to immediately imply that you’ve sought to get high status in emacs community when you put out your useful content that you’ve put so much time and effort in.

I expect all thought to be nuanced, otherwise it will be discerning the categories it already considers constant while reaching questionable conclusions in the process.

Everything can be construed as attention-seeking, including the act of avoiding attention, such that all actions are reducible to a want for status. If you apply this consistently, you quickly eliminate all nuance and your analytical capacity is limited accordingly.

In turn, this leads to the tendency of explaining everything along the lines of coping and projecting—“twin sophistries”, as I have called them before. If I say “I do not like X” it must be that I cannot have X as my own and thus I hide behind a negative opinion of X, without even realising it. Similarly, if I say “Y is what people do”, it is because Y really is a frailty of mine that I wish to find in other people so that I feel better about myself.

Couched in those terms, everything is an elaborate trick that is ultimately reducible to a matter for your genitals. So the answer to every “why” can be “sex” which in turn implies “survival”.

I think there is value in that line of reasoning but we have to be careful with it. It is not a magic trick to explain all that is pertinent to the human condition.

PROT: My attitude is to work with what I have and be grateful for it.

This. This is the part I am having a hard time with. Because when I read your blog, when I see your pictures, your videos, etc., I involuntarily find myself putting myself in your shoes, and finding myself gauging my emotional state if I was in your shoes. I find that I would be mostly furious with ambition, repeating the lines:

Do not go gentle into that good night. RAGE. RAGE, AGAINST THE DYING TO THE LIGHT.

…to myself, until I finally get my comeuppance against the world that has pushed me into poverty, loneliness. Finally take my vengeance and “get mine” in this world by getting a career (possibly in tech industry) that allows me to bring upon it disruption (as in “disruptive innovation” of business cycles) so that I can carve out a piece from the world in my shape (that is, “get mine”, in women, money and status).

I see. I do not feel anything about the world: it simply is. I am calm and do not blame anyone. If I was disturbed by my living conditions then I would have gone mad by now. Whereas I am indifferent towards specific outcomes and live as easygoing of a life as possible.

I make a distinction between “commitment to initiatives” and “commitment to results”. I am fully committed to my projects but I will not feel disturbed if things do not work the way I had imagined.

I understand, in the deepest sense of feeling and embodying it, that the world does not revolve around me and that I am not entitled to anything. The world does not exist for me and I do not expect it to conspire in my favour.