The Unchained Man review
What is The Unchained Man?
The Unchained Man is probably the least known book I’m going to review here.
While books such as Ray Dalio’s Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order and Rich Dad, Poor Dad appeal and reach millions, The Unchained Man has a readership in the thousands.
That’s because this book targets a very narrow niche, only 2.5% of the population.
Written by Caleb Jones, The Unchained Man is a man’s guide to becoming an Alpha Male 2.0.
Jones makes the argument that most men are trapped in “The Prison”, a mental jail imposed on us by society and all sorts of other external factors.
Only the Alpha Male 2.0 can escape.
Jones shows you how important it is to set goals in your life, and especially to adhere to an overarching mission and personal code.
I know, this sounds rather blasé and not really related to the topic of this site, but I’ll explain why this book is an excellent addition to your collection, even if you don’t quite fit into the target audience.
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Part 1: The Alpha Male 2.0
This whole section is about what exactly an Alpha Male 2.0 is and how you can become one.
An Alpha Male 2.0 is a man who has the following characteristics:
- He makes no apologies for who and what he is. He doesn’t give a damn what anyone else thinks of him.
- In each individual situation he has a high degree of outcome independence, in other words he is completely of how any individual situation goes. No matter what happens, no matter how the situation turns out, he knows it doesn’t matter in the long run and in general and he will be completely okay.
- He is masculine, confident and lives an abundant life.
- He has freedom of movement, financial freedom, sexual freedom, and social freedom
But perhaps the most important quality of an Alpha Male 2.0 is that he is consistently happy in the long run.
That sounds pretty good, right?
Part 2: Your Enemies
Becoming an Alpha Male 2.0 is not for everyone. Only 5% of all men can (or even want to) achieve this.
Why this is so difficult to achieve is explained in this chapter.
You could also just watch the video.
In general, 2 enemies stand in the way of consistent happiness for men:
- Societal programming
These are “facts” and opinions that reside in your brain that are programmed by society.
They sound correct but are completely false. An example would be: life in the West is the best, moving to another “lesser” country is a stupid choice, why would you do that?
- Outdated biological impulses
This deals with the fact that we still think like 50,000 years ago, we still have the same biological impulses as our prehistoric ancestors, while our lifestyle and culture have changed tremendously.
Think of the need to raise children, racism, territoriality, monogamy, military conflicts for land, marriage, and so on.
Why do men allow themselves to be blocked by those two enemies instead of being consistently happy?
That’s because they value these societal values more:
- Control over others
- Safety
- Emotional Validation
- Social Validation
- Not being alone
- Conformity
Jones beautifully explains why personal consistent happiness is more important than anything, and how to escape societal programming and outdated biological impulses.
He also demonstrates that the Western world has become very feminized in the last 50 years, and why it’s a good idea for masculine men to get out of here as soon as possible.
Something that fits in very well with the premise of Escaping the West.
Part 3: Your life
The author takes a closer look at what is actually important in life: consistent happiness.
He discusses the 7 parts of your life in which you must (relatively and subjectively) be successful in order to be happy:
- Your financial life
- Your sex life
- Your family life
- Your physical life
- Your social life
- Your free time
- Your spiritual life
In this chapter he also talks about one of the most important things you can do to achieve something in your life: establishing an overarching mission and underlying personal code.
Time management and selecting specific personal life goals (independent of societal values) are also discussed.
Part 4: Your women
This whole part is about women – obviously.
How they differ from men, how to deal with them and how to overcome your outdated sexual programming.
Becoming attractive as a man internally and externally are also topics he discusses.
The whole point of this part boils down to: monogamy doesn’t work anymore, so it’s crazy to commit to it.
Until about 50-60 years ago, monogamy was a good idea for most men, but in today’s global world, with skyrocketing divorce rates, cheating, casual sex apps, dating sites, and so on, that’s no way to be consistently happy.
Jones talks about which models of relationships do work, and why. He also explains how to have sex whenever you want.
(And it’s not about prostitution or sugar dating.)
Part 5: Your money
Jones explains why you should mainly do work you love (it all goes hand in hand with your mission), how to quickly achieve a high, location independent income, and other tips for optimizing your finances.
The main part of this part is about setting up one (or preferably more) Alpha 2.0 Business(es).
This is a location independent, highly profitable business, with no employees.
You are completely in charge of your own business and you can work and live wherever you want.
This is something I also value highly, because without location independent income, it’s very hard to escape the West.
In my analyses of countries to move to, one of the seven factors I use to rank countries is “Taxes on your location independent income”.
Becoming financially independent is crucial to being consistently happy, something I’ve clearly stated several times on this site.
Part 6: Your world
In this final chapter, he discusses a few other aspects of an Alpha Male 2.0’s life: how to be a good dad (if you want to be), being in good physical shape, and exploring the world.
What is especially interesting here is the chapter “Getting Out of the Box”.
This topic is heavily influenced by Harry Browne’s How I Found Freedom In an Unfree World. If you’ve read this book (and you definitely should!), you’ll know roughly what Jones will say too.
Jones explains why many people are trapped in “the box”, an internal circumstance that stands in the way of your freedom and/or your consistent happiness, something you impose on yourself.
Think of a failing marriage, a shit job, a destructive family situation, a financial limitation, and so on. This is a private Prison in which you voluntarily reside.
The key word here is “voluntarily”, because you can certainly choose to escape from these circumstances.
If you take a look at your life, you can undoubtedly discover your own “boxes”, a situation, person or limitation which would make you very happy if it weren’t in your life, and that you can completely remove, but which, for whatever reason, you choose to keep, despite the fact that it gets in the way of your happiness.
Escaping from your own “box” (perhaps even “boxes”) is crucial if you want to become an Alpha Male 2.0 and be consistently happy.
Personally, I have escaped from the following boxes:
- Left my dying European nation and moved to Asia without knowing anyone here or having the slightest idea how long I would stay, where and how and I would survive, what I would do with my life
- Quit my stable and mostly fun job to start working for myself. I have traded a relatively lucrative and reasonably safe source of income for a lot of uncertainty and a lot of temporary stress
- Agreed with my girlfriend of many years that monogamy wouldn’t work long term, and that the only way we’d stay together for the rest of our lives is if we embraced an open relationship
All of these cases were completely against what societal values told me to do.
They were decisions that completely changed my life, and definitely led to a lot of uncertainty and doubt in the beginning.
But were they worth it? Absolutely.
Getting out of your “boxes” isn’t comfortable and it can certainly be scary, but once you’re out of them, a whole new life opens up to you.
Yes, there is always a price you have to pay for getting out of your boxes.
But you have to weigh the cost of that price against the cost of staying in the box.
Staying in a box which makes you unhappy is always a heavier burden to bear than paying the temporary price, regardless of how high it is.
The Unchained Man rating
This is a book that changed my life in many positive ways.
Becoming an Alpha Male 2.0 isn’t for everyone, I get that, but The Unchained Man has plenty of interesting ideas to be worth reading anyway.
The Unchained Man is written in a crisp and informative manner, opens your eyes to the possibilities, and the many anecdotes from the life of Caleb Jones make it a pleasure to read.
Some things may bother you (like how monogamy doesn’t work), but even then it’s a good idea as a rational man/woman to read the arguments and logic Jones uses with an open mind.
All opinions and propositions in this book are undermined by rational arguments and facts, and I couldn’t find myself disagreeing with anything.
And if you’re one of those 5% of men for whom a lifestyle like Alpha Male 2.0 and a path to consistent long-term happiness sounds great, then you should just buy this book, read it several times and apply its lessons to your life
I can promise you it’ll be worth it.
Finally, at the end of the book, Jones gives a quote from Gene Simmons which inspires me to get the most out of this life, and I’ll close the article with this.
“What will you say right before they put you six feet under? Will you say “I wish I could have, I wish I would have, I wish I should have,” or will you say, “I did it all. Thank you and good night.”?”
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