Man’s first breath in this world was tainted with the stench of his own blood. Ever since his inception, he has had to fight for his life, his desires, and his offspring. Contrary to the female, no privilege was granted to man upon being born. He is of no inherent value; all of his worth must be earned. To be born worthless is the biological reality of every man in the history of humanity. As sperm is the abundant reproductive resource, its quality must be proven through the unforgiving gauntlet of evolution. And so, born worthless into a ruthless struggle for survival, with no knowledge or ability, man must make his mark upon the world. Or die trying, as evolutionary history has grimly reveald: we are the descendants of forty percent of our ancestors. The other sixty percent did not survive evolution’s feckless game, doomed to a brutish death without wife or children to remember them. It is with this grave knowledge that we must hallow our ancestors’ sacrifices, and seek to elucidate the dark world into which we are born. To understand the world, we must first understand ourselves.

Man (and woman) came into the world as a result of an unstable evolutionary equilibrium. Two strategies emerged: low and high investment in offspring, resulting in males and females respectively. Males, producing the abundant resource that is sperm, had to compete for females and their scarce eggs. In addition, they had to compete with other organisms for survival by hunting and foraging while defending themselves from predation. Naturally, males were born with a variety of abilities and talents, and some were far better at hunting and foraging than others. Few non-hunter males survived, as advanced hunting ability was non-negotiable for sustenance, mate acquisition, and the rearing of offspring. Thus, our earliest ancestors were the hunter-gatherers, the males which were chiseled through natural selection for hunting and all of its sub professions: tracking, trapping, tool creation and fire craft. These early ancestors originated in sub-Saharan Africa, where environmental conditions were extremely harsh. Death by predators and virulent pathogens (e.g. ancestors of malaria) was widespread. Combined with intra-male competition for females, this harsh environment led to the creation of man’s first social unit. This social unit consisted of the alpha male and a few close male relatives, in addition to the females they had amassed through skirmishes with other males. This “family unit” closely resembled the wolf pack, where an alpha male and a few related males guard a harem of females. The number of females was constrained by the protective ability of the alpha male’s team, in addition to their ability to provide food for the females and their subsequent offspring. The chain of command was simple: the alpha male ruled all. Any subservient males were in complete submission to the alpha, serving as an extra pair of hands and feet ruled by his mind. The subordinate males had little to no access to females, and would be driven out if they made any attempts. They existed solely to help the alpha male hunt, and were allowed enough food to subside.

The hunter-gatherer pack rewarded male cooperation in direct proportion to the rewards of big game hunting. If there was game large enough that it required a group of ten adult males to subdue, the alpha male had incentive to keep more of his male relatives in the pack. Initially, packs remained small, with one alpha male and one or two close male relatives guarding a handful of females. As man spread throughout Africa and into Eurasia to discover exotic game, larger packs began to form. These large packs were the first iterations of man’s second social unit: the tribe. The tribe consisted of the smallest number of men necessary to hunt the largest prey, and as many females as they could feed and defend. Male hierarchy was established, as this was the most efficient way of coordinating a hunting party. The alpha male called the plays, and the others assisted him in their designated roles. The alpha male now had to distribute the fertile females among the males to motivate them to hunt and prevent mutiny. Females were distributed based on status within the male hierarchy; those closest to the alpha male received the most females, and those furthest received the least.

This was a turning point in human society, as male success was now directly a function of his standing within the male hierarchy. A successful man had to be ruthless with his enemies in battle, confident with his peers in the hunt, and diplomatic when engaging the tribe. Hunting skill was decoupled from the definition of success, and man was rewarded for mastery of a diverse personality. Status within the tribe was paramount, as higher status directly resulted in more mating opportunities. As a tribe grew larger, more emphasis was placed on these personality traits than an individual’s skills, since one hunter’s ability was less crucial to a large hunting party. The seeds of the dark triad had been sown.

With the dawn of agriculture, the tribe led to the city-state. Male hierarchies expanded rapidly, and a man’s success became increasingly linked to his status. Skills were common and fungible, and men who could extract submission from skilled laborers owned the rights to the fruits of their toil. No longer did a man need to risk life and liberty as a soldier, merchant, or artisan to shell out a living. He merely needed to claim sufficient status to command skilled subordinates to do his bidding. Status had become an end unto itself. Ruthlessness led to psychopathy, confidence to narcissism, and diplomacy to sociopathy. The dark triad was unleashed, and the men born with its dark brand infiltrated the highest echelons of male hierarchy.

The triads thrived off status, disposing of whomever stood in their way with whatever means necessary. Extortion, murder, blackmail, torture…these were but a few of the countless tools in a the dark triad’s malevolent arsenal. The fearlessness of a bullfighter, the drive of a serial killer, and the charm of an actor were forged together to create an unstoppable status seeking machine, cutting down its enemies with impunity. The triads would only cooperate when it was in their benefit, and would never hesitate to betray anyone for the right gain. They were lone wolves and trusted no one, yet commanded the fear and love of their citizenry with status alone. Such effective parasites were they, that as city-states became nations, and nations became empires, their powers only grew. Their success had proven itself: they had taken the reigns of every major society in existence. They were without allegiance, without ideology, and without morals. They had one purpose: to extract submission from all.

How did honest skilled men allow such rapacious parasites to commandeer their society? They didn’t. They attempted to enact laws to punish the triads’ tactics, but they were always one step behind. It boiled down to a simple truth: the honest men were unwilling and incapable of fighting the triads at their own game. These men were uncomfortable gambling with their lives like the triads, and moral compunctions stayed their hands when it came to dealing with their ilk. And thus, the only way to defeat a member of the dark triad was to become one.

And so it came to pass that these dark folk, blindly picked by old natural selection, came to dominate all terrestrial life. Those born without the dark brand are forever at their mercy, unable and unwilling to play their insane game. They are all around us; when we hear of conspiracy theories, of men behind the veil, of hooded figures scheming in the night. Yet make no mistake: no two dark triads work together forever. Their only goal is complete domination, and if they allow a moment of weakness by maintaining an honest alliance with another man, they shall be overturned and deposed. Such is the nature of the game, and thus, why we shall never convict the wizard behind the curtain as the One Great Evil. Alas, he is forever being deposed and overthrown by other equally evil men whose desires compel them onward. Those conceived with the seed of the dark triad are eternally dominated by its unwavering directive, nudging them maddeningly onward. Like Chinese water torture, these impulses do not weaken and do not stop; the drops of darkness reminding a triad of his singular purpose, as he is strapped helplessly naked before evolution’s cruel design.

Alas dear reader, it does not end here. For I have neglected to mention the final clue in this disquieting mystery: woman. Your deepest fears shall be realized once you understand that women, for their part, can only feel true love when mating with a dark triad. This is because women have come to love these men who dominate all others, who survive the harshest situations by commanding the skills of far more qualified men, and who have no moral, ethical, or spiritual reserve when extracting submission. Natural selection guarantees that the dark triads shall survive all others in the most dire circumstances, for they will not stop at anything to achieve their goals. They do not understand good or bad, right or wrong; only desire. It is this trait which makes them irresistible to females, for they have already been selected countless times in the past by evolution herself. We have not always lived in pampered civilizations; the history of humanity is rife with death and destruction. Yet, time and time again, the triads have survived all challenges and produced the most successful offspring. This has resulted in an instinctual love of these traits by women, regardless of origin or ethnicity. It is the universal desire of woman, a desire so powerful it overrides logic and emotion and makes her a willful agent of her own seduction. Few can accept this truth, for it is ramifications are naught but dire.

And yet here we stand. In a society where women are emancipated to seek their deepest desires, we see this trend play out like clockwork. As the twilight of enforced monogamy draws ever closer around the world, the dark triads eclipse all other men. Some curious men have seen its sorcery at work with females, and to this day attempt to mimic its motions. Yet as these practitioners of Game learn more about the truth, they realize that aping behavior is insufficient. They must transform their entire existence to reflect a physical manifestation of the dark triad, becoming indistinguishable from the natural product. This is because females can sniff the faintest scent of a decoy, and their scorn is formidable if they find they have been duped. Only by embodying the very definition of evil can we fulfill our desires, and the desires of our beloved women.

So be it.