Rebuilding masculinity and mastery in the age of AI: Why young men are ditching college for competence and sovereignty

By finnheartley // 2025-10-07

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Western Decline & Alternative Education: Universities produce indebted, indoctrinated graduates, while fathers like Matt Smith reject this decay through The Preparation—a four-year program teaching sailing, survival, and martial arts for a collapsing world.
Decentralization vs. Dependency: AI threatens white-collar jobs, but decentralized skills (robotics, permaculture, prompt engineering) offer resilience as welfare, bailouts, and DEI incompetence push systemic failure.
Crisis of Masculinity: Men face cultural and chemical emasculation (pesticides, plastics, porn). The antidote? Self-reliance: detox, gold hoarding, food sovereignty, and rejecting weakness to avoid civilizational collapse.
AI & Future Skills: Open-source AI democratizes learning (Yale lectures, Jiu-Jitsu tutorials), but survival demands hands-on mastery—farming drones, off-grid resilience, and robotics to outlast digital dollar failures.
Collapse of Credentialism: Employers will prioritize real-world apprenticeships over woke degrees. Gold, crypto, and firearms training will eclipse fiat debt slavery as the system implodes—only the prepared will thrive.

In an era where universities churn out indebted, ideologically indoctrinated graduates—like Harvard’s plagiarist president—while men are chemically feminized and culturally neutered, the West faces an existential crisis of capability. Fathers like Matt Smith and his son Max reject this decay, pioneering The Preparation, a radical four-year alternative to college that teaches sailing, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and off-grid survival—skills that matter in a collapsing world. Meanwhile, AI threatens to render "ChatGPT cheaters" obsolete, while centralized systems push dependency via welfare, student loan bailouts, and DEI-driven incompetence. The solution? Decentralize or perish: master robotics, permaculture, prompt engineering, and martial arts—because when the digital dollar fails and supply chains crumble, only those who can build, fight, and think independently will survive.

The Crisis of Modern Masculinity

From Hollywood’s mockery of masculinity to the estrogenic assault of pesticides and plastics, young men are being programmed for weakness. As Max Smith warns: "If you can’t say ‘no’ to porn, you’ll need Viagra by 25." The antidote? Reject borrowed desires, hoard gold, grow food, and reclaim the virtues of self-reliance—before China, Russia, and the Global South laugh as the West starves, helpless, in its own woke dystopia.

The Preparation: A Renaissance Man’s Blueprint

Matt Smith, entrepreneur and mentor to his son Max, co-authored The Preparation with libertarian icon Doug Casey. The book outlines a four-year program structured around "Be, Do, Have"—a philosophy prioritizing virtue, action, and tangible skills over hollow credentials.

Be: Cultivate personal integrity. Define your code—what makes you feel strong vs. weak.
Do: Engage in real-world challenges—wildfire fighting, EMT training, sailing the Strait of Magellan.
Have: Wealth flows naturally from competence, not climbing corporate ladders.

Max, now 20, skipped college to apprentice with Uruguayan gauchos, fight wildfires, and train in Muay Thai—experiences no university could replicate.

AI, Decentralization, and the Future of Work

While AI threatens white-collar jobs (finance, coding, even journalism), it also democratizes learning. Open-source AI models allow self-education—Yale lectures, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu tutorials, permaculture guides—without woke indoctrination. The key? Decentralized robotics:

Farmbots: AI-assisted agriculture (Max already uses drones for seeding).
Prompt Engineering: Mastering AI to command robots—not be replaced by them.
Off-Grid Resilience: Grow food, fix engines, defend your homestead.

The Chemical War on Men

Beyond cultural decay, men face physiological sabotage:

Atrazine: Feminizing herbicide sprayed on non-organic crops.
Soy Estrogens & Microplastics: Hormone disruptors in processed food.
Blue Light & Porn Addiction: Killing testosterone and ambition.

The solution? Detox, sunlight, clean living—and rejecting the soy-boy fate.

The Coming Collapse of Credentialism

As employers wake up to college grads who can’t spell or reason, The Preparation offers a lifeline:

Employers will soon seek "graduates" of real-world apprenticeships.
Gold, silver, and crypto will outlast fiat debt slavery.
Martial arts and firearms training will be survival essentials.

Conclusion: Reject the Woke Death Spiral

The West’s decline isn’t inevitable—but saving it requires men who can say "no" to degeneracy and "yes" to mastery. As Matt Smith puts it: "If you want to destroy a civilization, destroy the men who act like men." For parents, grandparents, and young men: Skip the debt. Skip the indoctrination. Embrace sovereignty. Because when the system collapses—and it will—only the prepared will thrive. Watch the full episode of the "Decentralize TV" with Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, Todd Pitner, Matt & Maxim Smith as they discuss raising renaissance men in an age of weakness. This video is from the Health Ranger Report channel on Brighteon.com.

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