To my friends

To my friends


Read closely. If you hear people slandering me or dragging my name through mud or however you want to put it, just let them be. I appreciate it very much when people stick up for me, but it's completely unnecessary. I need no defense attorney. I've reached a point where my person has become very resilient. I even gave up defending myself in most ways quite a while ago and, interestingly, outcomes are probably the same. I like to let people figure shit out on their own and if they're worth a damn, they will figure the right things out. As for the rest of you.... I won't say "It's your loss" because I don't care to recycle sayings much... But, if you don't like the way I am then it's inconsequential to me because there are people who do.

I need no one to stand behind me anymore, in fact I'm asking you not to.

Dear Mat Threet. From: Anonymous

This was sent to me, written for me and I think it's one of the most beautiful things I have ever received. This must be how girls feel when they are given roses.

Tell me what you think.







The Lion versus Myself..two very strong competitors. The Lion was massive. He was strong and vulgar yet young and wise and so beautiful. I looked wondrously into his eyes, but was careful not to blink. He could move faster than i’d imagined, and I didn’t want to miss a thing. I was silently screaming for him to take me on, even at the risk of being painfully devoured by him. He knew I was on fire...this made him afraid. He’d never had someone see through him like I did. I read him like the countless books i’ve absorbed in my lifetime. This made him vulnerable, but I never took advantage. I wasn’t afraid of being close to him.I wasn’t afraid of what he was capable of doing to me. I wasn’t afraid of his eyes or his rage. I wasn’t afraid of the dark. I wasn’t afraid of the silence. I wasn’t afraid of his height. I was afraid of Myself.




-anonymous

Contreversial blog

I'm angry.Complex guy here right? (That's what everyone thinks.) Just want to address a few things. First, yes I still think I'm the shit....and no that still doesn't mean that I think I'm better than anyone because I don't. Enough about that.

At one point in my life I felt obligated to women with boyfriends that did not deserve them.That is to say that he did not deserve her...and she deserved me.This obligation led to a certain obsession that im less than proud of, but i still would tell you about it if you asked. I wasted a lot of time when i was young and dumb on a certain girl, Lesley Hernandez. Not to say that shes a waste completely, shes just a waste to my situation. She was not helping get closer to being perfect. Besides she looks better standing next to uhh, guys that are different than me haha. (damn is it PC to mention someone by name on Blogspot?). Actually, as a side note, I really enjoy doing things that make your eyes go wide. Everyone knows that though so back to the buisness.

I dated a girl for a while and I feel like i sugar coated my very own situation. My feelings blinded me (like the woman who is constantly beat by her husband but never leaves). Things werent so bad, they were great actually for the most part. But now the situation has me writing....and you guys know I only write when im pissed off or sad so there you go. I'm not going to mention her by name because I have some respect left.So anyways I allowed this girl to hide me from her family and her friends that were in her same little frame of mind. Long story short, I am Caucasian and apparently that is less than desirable to certain people. I suppose you could say that i was looked at as just a notch below them....but I'll take that lol. I'm not playing the same game as the people who judge me by race...and I never felt like i fit in very well with human beings anyways (I'm an alien). I still hold no grudge against anyone of that certain race or anyone else of any race only based on that because not all of them look at me in the same ignorant way.

This situation may have created some issues for me...but at least we got a blog post out of it huh?

Love
AMAP (That's Mat Threet)

December 30, 1987- December 29, 2022.

I had the strange assignment of writing my own obituary this weekend. This was an assignment for my leadership class. In a vey abstract way, it can possibly help you figure things out. Where do you want to be in your life before you die? What do you hope to accomplish?

You know I would have written much more about myself given the chance, however, I had to limit my life to 300 words. Hope you find it interesting, and maybe try it yourself.

-AMAP (That's Mat Threet)





Matthew R. Threet
December 30, 1987 – December 29, 2022


Mat “AMAP” Threet PhD. died early yesterday afternoon in the slums of the Tri-State area. He was gunned down by John Zarcone who, ironically, is part of the family he went to help. Threet was on a typical self assigned project to spread confidence to a family who was oppressed by their insecurities and false inferiority.
Threet often spent his time in such a manner, beginning when he dedicated his life to helping people gain confidence in themselves and their situations at the young age of 17. While his friends, family and students knew him to be a man of honorable intentions, he was often misunderstood. He prided himself in being a loner, always claiming to be introspective and always loved to claim that he felt on top of the world, but simultaneously above no other man. His activism in feminism and equality by other means created a long list of accomplishments in his life.
His life was filled with unrequited love. Whether it be him in love with a woman who did not love him back or the women who loved him who he did not love back, he never connected with any one women in a way that he always dreamed of; but did always live the fast life as a playboy. He was not only a teacher and big brother figure to many former students, but a very dependable friend and family man.
Threet is survived by his son Church. Church is 5 years old and already shows signs of ample confidence, just like his father.

RE: P. Fox

I encourage everyone to read Priscilla Fox's take on a woman's collective stance in this world. I posted my reply to it below. Here's the link.

http://priscillafox27.blogspot.com/



Great post Priscilla. I too am a feminist (most people probably don't even know that there is a such thing as a male feminist). Just to expand on you idea a bit I'll explain why I am a feminist.

My entire life is about advocating that everyone reach their potential. As you know Priscilla, I believe confidence is at the very top of the list of obtainable traits that EVERYONE, surprisingly myself included, needs more of. I believe that if everyone became more confident, a lot of social and cultural ailments would move toward being heeled. The confidence issue is another subject for another blog.

What I am getting at is that, contrary to popular belief, confidence should be gained by pulling everyone up with you, as opposed to pushing others down to rise above. That said, it is obvious that I must help my sisters overcome such a primitive problem that has been imposed into their lives.

Well, you know, that's just my take but who am I?

AMAP (That's Mat Threet)

P.S. I would have loved to have seen you throw "All Men Are Pigs" among the other qoutes, although it wouldn't have anything to do with what you were talking about. :)

Confidence...To be continued

Okay guys, this is somewhat of a persuasive essay i did for the paper a year or so ago. Im sure most of you didn't catch it in print, but I think it's a positive enough message that EVERYONE should read it. I plan on eventually exploding this idea into a well thought out campaign that I'll take everywhere with me and try to change someones life with. I hope at least one of you gets something from this, although it is kind of primitive and under developed due to my spacial constraints for it to be printed.

Thanks and email me your replies.

- AMAP (That's Mat Threet)

Confidence is an idea that is taught at a very early age and is reinforced throughout our whole lives. Whether it be the heroin of our favorite Disney movie as children, or our favorite pop singer, the media bombards us with the notion that it is cool to feel good about ourselves. This endorsement of self confidence is undoubtedly linked to the motivation that it brings, and, with motivation comes a more productive society. But the reasons behind it are an entirely separate issue.

The point is, it’s there. American pop-culture is over-flowing with self confidence, at least those who represent it. But where has the general public’s confidence gone? Now, of course not everyone has self-esteem problems, however, in my opinion, far too many people do, and it has even come to the point that those who have manifested their potential confidence are labeled with words and phrases of a more negative connotation such as “cocky” or “egotistical”. However, I doubt it could be debated that those people bring more positive energy than negative to the room. And yes, some of these people have a surplus of confidence but is it not better to have too much then not enough?

A lot of people scrutinize themselves far too much for one day before they even step foot out of their front door to join the rest of the overly judgmental. Obviously, everyone is self-critical to a certain extent, and this is a good way to keep ourselves walking the line, however, many take it too far. Must we be so hard on ourselves?

I walk through campus and see a wide variety of people. I see different groups of friends sitting in wait for their next class to begin, and I see some sitting alone studying hard for an upcoming exam (God help them), among many other different situations. However, with so many different situations, I see people take the back seat in conversations because they obviously are afraid to voice their opinion due to their lack of confidence. I see the men and women on campus sit in admiration of a class mate all semester long but never say a word to them. I see people in class who have great vantage points yet to be explored in certain subjects in class that never raise their hand because they are afraid of what their classmates may think. I see a general lack of confidence that is both heart-breaking and uncalled for.

Truth be told, we all have good and bad points of our character. We all struggle with the same types of problems from day to day. We all do well with some things that not everyone else does. This is my point: we all have something to be confident about. I charge you to realize that you are great, as are the men and women that stand next to you. Although we all have different reasons to feel great, not one person has no any reason to feel great.

This is an excerpt from a classic book by a woman named Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead. It is a novel with ideologies webbed throughout it and is multi-themed. If you have time I would suggest you read it, however, it is very long. But I think this passage is an important read, at least it was for me.

Ill set up the book in a general sense up to this point so the monologue makes sense.
Howard Roark, the main character, is a reclusive architect that struggles with his ego his entire career, beginning with being expelled from architect school. Throughout his career he maintains that he will not borrow obne idea from another past architect, he will be completely original in his work. Because of this idea, he lives poorly, rarely finding work or someone to trust his designs.
When he gets the job of building a low income housing project, the Cortandt Housing, his contract states that after his drawings are submitted, they will not be changed ion any way. After he submits them, changes were made. When this happens, he decides to blow up the buildings with large amounts of dynamite.

The excerpt below is Roark's closing argument in his defense, while he represents himself against the state of New York in the courtroom.












"Thousands of years ago, the first man discovered how to make fire. He was probably burned at the stake he had taught his brothers to light. He was considered an evildoer who had dealt with a demon mankind dreaded. But thereafter men had fire to keep them warm, to cook their food, to light their caves. He had left them a gift they had not conceived and he had lifted darkness off the earth. Centuries later, the first man invented the wheel. He was probably torn on the rack he had taught his brothers to build. He was considered a transgressor who ventured into forbidden territory. But thereafter, men could travel past any horizon. He had left them a gift they had not conceived and he had opened the roads of the world.

"That man, the unsubmissive and first, stands in the opening chapter of every legend mankind has recorded about its beginning. Prometheus was chained to a rock and torn by vultures-because he had stolen the fire of the gods. Adam was condemned to suffer--because he had eaten the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Whatever the legend, somewhere in the shadows of its memory mankind knew that its glory began with one and that that one paid for his courage.

"Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision. Their goals differed, but they all had this in common: that the step was first, the road new, the vision unborrowed, and the response they received--hatred. The great creators--the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors--stood alone against the men of their time. Every great new thought was opposed. Every great new invention was denounced. The first motor was considered foolish. The airplane was considered impossible. The power loom was considered vicious. Anesthesia was considered sinful. But the men of unborrowed vision went ahead. They fought, they suffered and they paid. But they won. "No creator was prompted by a desire to serve his brothers, for his brothers rejected the gift he offered and that gift destroyed the slothful routine of their lives. His truth was his only motive. His own truth, and his own work to achieve it in his own way. A symphony, a book, an engine, a philosophy, an airplane or a building--that was his goal and his life. Not those who heard, read, operated, believed, flew or inhabited the thing he had created. The creation, not its users. The creation, not the benefits others derived from it. The creation which gave form to his truth. He held his truth above all things and against all men.

"His vision, his strength, his courage came from his own spirit. A man's spirit, however, is his self. That entity which is his consciousness. To think, to feel, to judge, to act are functions of the ego.

"The creators were not selfless. It is the whole secret of their power--that it was self-sufficient, self-motivated, self-generated. A first cause, a fount of energy, a life force, a Prime Mover. The creator served nothing and no one. He had lived for himself. "And only by living for himself was he able to achieve the things which are the glory of mankind. Such is the nature of achievement.

"Man cannot survive except through his mind. He comes on earth unarmed. His brain is his only weapon. Animals obtain food by force. Man has no claws, no fangs, no horns, no great strength of muscle. He must plant his food or hunt it. To plant, he needs a process of thought. To hunt, he needs weapons, and to make weapons--a process of thought. From this simplest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and everything we have comes from a single attribute of man--the function of his reasoning mind.

"But the mind is an attribute of the individual. There is no such thing as a collective brain. There is no such thing as a collective thought. An agreement reached by a group of men is only a compromise or an average drawn upon many individual thoughts. It is a secondary consequence. The primary act--the process of reason--must be performed by each man alone. We can divide a meal among many men. We cannot digest it in a collective stomach. No man can use his lungs to breathe for another man. No man can use his brain to think for another. All the functions of body and spirit are private. They cannot be shared or transferred. "We inherit the products of the thought of other men. We inherit the wheel. We make a cart. The cart becomes an automobile. The automobile becomes an airplane. But all through the process what we receive from others is only the end product of their thinking. The moving force is the creative faculty which takes this product as material, uses it and originates the next step. This creative faculty cannot be given or received, shared or borrowed. It belongs to single, individual men. That which it creates is the property of the creator. Men learn from one another. But all learning is only the exchange of material. No man can give another the capacity to think. Yet that capacity is our only means of survival.

"Nothing is given to man on earth. Everything he needs has to be produced. And here man faces his basic alternative: he can survive in only one of two ways--by the independent work of his own mind or as a parasite fed by the minds of others. The creator originates. The parasite borrows. The creator faces nature alone. The parasite faces nature through an intermediary.

"The creator's concern is the conquest of nature. The parasite's concern is the conquest of men.

"The creator lives for his work. He needs no other men. His primary goal is within himself. The parasite lives second-hand. He needs others. Others become his prime motive."The basic need of the creator is independence. The reasoning mind cannot work under any form of compulsion. It cannot be curbed, sacrificed or subordinated to any consideration whatsoever. It demands total independence in function and in motive. To a creator, all relations with men are secondary. "The basic need of the second-hander is to secure his ties with men in order to be fed. He places relations first. He declares that man exists in order to serve others. He preaches altruism.

"Altruism is the doctrine which demands that man live for others and place others above self.

"No man can live for another. He cannot share his spirit just as he cannot share his body. But the second-hander has used altruism as a weapon of exploitation and reversed the base of mankind's moral principles. Men have been taught every precept that destroys the creator. Men have been taught dependence as a virtue. "The man who attempts to live for others is a dependent. He is a parasite in motive and makes parasites of those he serves. The relationship produces nothing but mutual corruption. It is impossible in concept. The nearest approach to it in reality--the man who lives to serve others--is the slave. If physical slavery is repulsive, how much more repulsive is the concept of servility of the spirit? The conquered slave has a vestige of honor. He has the merit of having resisted and of considering his condition evil. But the man who enslaves himself voluntarily in the name of love is the basest of creatures. He degrades the dignity of man and he degrades the conception of love. But this is the essence of altruism. "Men have been taught that the highest virtue is not to achieve, but to give. Yet one cannot give that which has not been created. Creation comes before distribution--or there will be nothing to distribute. The need of the creator comes before the need of any possible beneficiary. Yet we are taught to admire the second-hander who dispenses gifts he has not produced above the man who made the gifts possible. We praise an act of charity. We shrug at an act of achievement. "Men have been taught that their first concern is to relieve the suffering of others. But suffering is a disease. Should one come upon it, one tries to give relief and assistance. To make that the highest test of virtue is to make suffering the most important part of life. Then man must wish to see others suffer--in order that he may be virtuous. Such is the nature of altruism. The creator is not concerned with disease, but with life. Yet the work of the creators has eliminated one form of disease after another, in man's body and spirit, and brought more relief from suffering than any altruist could ever conceive.

"Men have been taught that it is a virtue to agree with others. But the creator is the man who disagrees. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to swim with the current. But the creator is the man who goes against the current. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to stand together. But the creator is the man who stands alone.

"Men have been taught that the ego is the synonym of evil, and selflessness the ideal of virtue. But the creator is the egotist in the absolute sense, and the selfless man is the one who does not think, feel, judge, or act. These are functions of the self. "Here the basic reversal is most deadly. The issue has been perverted and man has been left no alternative--and no freedom. As poles of good and evil, he was offered two conceptions: egotism and altruism. Egotism was held to mean the sacrifice of others to self. Altruism--the sacrifice of self to others. This tied man irrevocably to other men and left him nothing but a choice of pain: his own pain borne for the sake of others or pain inflicted upon others for the sake of self. When it was added that man must find joy in self-immolation, the trap was closed. Man was forced to accept masochism as his ideal--under the threat that sadism was his only alternative. This was the greatest fraud ever perpetrated on mankind.

"This was the device by which dependence and suffering were perpetuated as fundamentals of life.

"The choice is not self-sacrifice or domination. The choice is independence or dependence. The code of the creator or the code of the second-hander. This is the basic issue. It rests upon the alternative of life or death. The code of the creator is built on the needs of the reasoning mind which allows man to survive. The code of the second-hander is built on the needs of a mind incapable of survival. All that which proceeds from man's independent ego is good. All that which proceeds from man's dependence upon men is evil.

"The egotist in the absolute sense is not the man who sacrifices others. He is the man who stands above the need of using others in any manner. He does not function through them. He is not concerned with them in any primary matter. Not in his aim, not in his motive, not in his thinking, not in his desires, not in the source of his energy. He does not exist for any other man--and he asks no other man to exist for him. This is the only form of brotherhood and mutual respect possible between men.

"Degrees of ability vary, but the basic principle remains the same: the degree of a man's independence, initiative and personal love for his work determines his talent as a worker and his worth as a man. Independence is the only gauge of human virtue and value. What a man is and makes of himself; not what he has or hasn't done for others. There is no substitute for personal dignity. There is no standard of personal dignity except independence. "In all proper relationships there is no sacrifice of anyone to anyone. An architect needs clients, but he does not subordinate his work to their wishes. They need him, but they do not order a house just to give him a commission. Men exchange their work by free, mutual consent to mutual advantage when their personal interests agree and they both desire the exchange. If they do not desire it, they are not forced to deal with each other. They seek further. This is the only possible form of relationship between equals. Anything else is a relation of slave to master, or victim to executioner.

"No work is ever done collectively, by a majority decision. Every creative job is achieved under the guidance of a single individual thought. An architect requires a great many men to erect his building. But he does not ask them to vote on his design. They work together by free agreement and each is free in his proper function. An architect uses steel, glass, concrete, produced by others. But the materials remain just so much steel, glass and concrete until he touches them. What he does with them is his individual product and his individual property. This is the only pattern for proper co-operation among men.

"The first right on earth is the right of the ego. Man's first duty is to himself. His moral law is never to place his prime goal within the persons of others. His moral obligation is to do what he wishes, provided his wish does not depend primarily upon other men. This includes the whole sphere of his creative faculty, his thinking, his work. But it does not include the sphere of the gangster, the altruist and the dictator.

"A man thinks and works alone. A man cannot rob, exploit or rule--alone. Robbery, exploitation and ruling presuppose victims. They imply dependence. They are the province of the second-hander.

"Rulers of men are not egotists. They create nothing. They exist entirely through the persons of others. Their goal is in their subjects, in the activity of enslaving. They are as dependent as the beggar, the social worker and the bandit. The form of dependence does not matter. "But men were taught to regard second-handers--tyrants, emperors, dictators--as exponents of egotism. By this fraud they were made to destroy the ego, themselves and others. The purpose of the fraud was to destroy the creators. Or to harness them. Which is a synonym.

"From the beginning of history, the two antagonists have stood face to face: the creator and the second-hander. When the first creator invented the wheel, the first second-hander responded. He invented altruism.

"The creator--denied, opposed, persecuted, exploited--went on, moved forward and carried all humanity along on his energy. The second-hander contributed nothing to the process except the impediments. The contest has another name: the individual against the collective.

"The 'common good' of a collective--a race, a class, a state--was the claim and justification of every tyranny ever established over men. Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive. Has any act of selfishness ever equaled the carnage perpetrated by disciples of altruism? Does the fault lie in men's hypocrisy or in the nature of the principle? The most dreadful butchers were the most sincere. They believed in the perfect society reached through the guillotine and the firing squad. Nobody questioned their right to murder since they were murdering for an altruistic purpose. It was accepted that man must be sacrificed for other men. Actors change, but the course of the tragedy remains the same. A humanitarian who starts with declarations of love for mankind and ends with a sea of blood. It goes on and will go on so long as men believe that an action is good if it is unselfish. That permits the altruist to act and forces his victims to bear it. The leaders of collectivist movements ask nothing for themselves. But observe the results.

"The only good which men can do to one another and the only statement of their proper relationship is--Hands off!

"Now observe the results of a society built on the principle of individualism. This, our country. The noblest country in the history of men. The country of greatest achievement, greatest prosperity, greatest freedom. This country was not based on selfless service, sacrifice, renunciation or any precept of altruism. It was based on a man's right to the pursuit of happiness. His own happiness. Not anyone else's. A private, personal, selfish motive. Look at the results. Look into your own conscience.

"It is an ancient conflict. Men have come close to the truth, but it was destroyed each time and one civilization fell after another. Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.

"Now, in our age, collectivism, the rule of the second-hander and second-rater, the ancient monster, has broken loose and is running amuck. It has brought men to a level of intellectual indecency never equaled on earth. It has reached a scale of horror without precedent. It has poisoned every mind. It has swallowed most of Europe. It is engulfing our country.

"I am an architect. I know what is to come by the principle on which it is built. We are approaching a world in which I cannot permit myself to live.

"Now you know why I dynamited Cortlandt. "I designed Cortlandt. I gave it to you. I destroyed it. "I destroyed it because I did not choose to let it exist. It was a double monster. In form and in implication. I had to blast both. The form was mutilated by two second-handers who assumed the right to improve upon that which they had not made and could not equal. They were permitted to do it by the general implication that the altruistic purpose of the building superseded all rights and that I had no claim to stand against it.

"I agreed to design Cortlandt for the purpose of seeing it erected as I designed it and for no other reason. That was the price I set for my work. I was not paid.

"I do not blame Peter Keating. He was helpless. He had a contract with his employers. It was ignored. He had a promise that the structure he offered would be built as designed. The promise was broken. The love of a man for the integrity of his work and his right to preserve it are now considered a vague intangible and an unessential. You have heard the prosecutor say that. Why was the building disfigured? For no reason. Such acts never have any reason, unless it's the vanity of some second-handers who feel they have a right to anyone's property, spiritual or material. Who permitted them to do it? No particular man among the dozens in authority. No one cared to permit it or to stop it. No one was responsible. No one can be held to account. Such is the nature of all collective action.

"I did not receive the payment I asked. But the owners of Cortlandt got what they needed from me. They wanted a scheme devised to build a structure as cheaply as possible. They found no one else who could do it to their satisfaction. I could and did. They took the benefit of my work and made me contribute it as a gift. But I am not an altruist. I do not contribute gifts of this nature.

"It is said that I have destroyed the home of the destitute. It is forgotten that but for me the destitute could not have had this particular home. Those who were concerned with the poor had to come to me, who have never been concerned, in order to help the poor. It is believed that the poverty of the future tenants gave them a right to my work. That their need constituted a claim on my life. That it was my duty to contribute anything demanded of me. This is the second-hander's credo now swallowing the world.

"I came here to say that I do not recognize anyone's right to one minute of my life. Nor to any part of my energy. Nor to any achievement of mine. No matter who makes the claim, how large their number or how great their need.

"I wished to come here and say that I am a man who does not exist for others. "It had to be said. The world is perishing from an orgy of self-sacrificing.

"I wished to come here and say that the integrity of a man's creative work is of greater importance than any charitable endeavor. Those of you who do not understand this are the men who're destroying the world. "I wished to come here and state my terms. I do not care to exist on any others.

"I recognize no obligations toward men except one: to respect their freedom and to take no part in a slave society. To my country, I wish to give the ten years which I will spend in jail if my country exists no longer. I will spend them in memory and in gratitude for what my country has been. It will be my act of loyalty, my refusal to live or work in what has taken its place.

"My act of loyalty to every creator who ever lived and was made to suffer by the force responsible for the Cortlandt I dynamited. To every tortured hour of loneliness, denial, frustration, abuse he was made to spend--and to the battles he won. To every creator whose name is known--and to every creator who lived, struggled and perished unrecognized before he could achieve. To every creator who was destroyed in body or in spirit. To Henry Cameron. To Steven Mallory. To a man who doesn't want to be named, but who is sitting in this courtroom and knows that I am speaking of him."