I grew up without a dad or any male friends or relatives, and

>>16898911
I'm in the same boat. In a lot of ways I'm still lost. I grew up without a father, but I at least had a lot of male friends who I hung out with. It didn't teach me shit though. They were white trash douchebags. From what I've learnt, I think a lot of the traits of being a man are innate. The key factor I think is ambition. Ambition to succeed, in whatever it is you're doing. Find your strength, and work at it until it's yours. I never had a lot of ambition growing up, and I've come to terms with the fact that I was, for the most part, a cuck. I would chase women, thinking that a relationship was the key to success. Nah. Women are a byproduct of success. And they'll go just as easily as they came.

I'm not good at much, but I know where my strengths are, and I'm throwing out as many lines as I can for the biggest possible return. Investing, business, app development, writing, science even. Anything I can to prevent my inevitable suicide.

You're young man. You've got plenty of time. Just don't chase girls like they'll solve all your problems. They don't. And they're boring as fuck.

Pro-tip from somebody who did, did, and did: there's no secret advice or stuff you're meant to know.

What you're feeling might be the lack of a definitive authority figure. You don't have a concrete and established standard to hold yourself to, so you're not sure where to aim.

>>16898921
I don't like women like that and for the longest time I thought I was gay, until I met a gay guy and realised I don't feel any special about guys either.

>>16898922
You're true about authorities. There have been none ever since I had the "adults are people too" epiphany as a teen and ever since there's really been nothing and nobody to obey.

>>16898933
Well as far as the whole authorities thing goes, you might be luckier than you think you are.

While the benefit of having a strong authority figure is that you have a definitive standard to set for yourself, the downside is that it's a standard you unconsciously adopted before you knew any better.

So tell me, OP, what do you think are the components of a good person. Gender aside (whatever definition of gender you ascribe to), what kind of person do you think is a good person to be?

>>16898946
A good person is someone who believes that a true, objective goodness can exist without an "evil" to counter it. That the divide isn't between people who do good for the sake of doing good and people who do evil for the sake of being evil.

Goood people are people who believe in the existence of good, and try to act right for the sake of it. The others simply don't. Maybe they grew up wrong, being too emotionally damaged or misled by messed-up priorities, but at the deepest core every human being has the potential to be good. Making that choice, and the effort to work towards it, is harder for some than it is for others, but there is no situation in which it would be truly possible. Regardless, it's hard and judging or hating anyone for not having it within them to do good is counterproductive.

Being a good person is doing the right thing, no matter the cost, but if the price feels too much to pay for the outcome, it wasn't the right thing to do.

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>>16898972
I'm glad you took a little while to respond to that, but do keep thinking about it. My experience has taught me that these kind of questions can't be answered by just thinking about it very hard once or twice, try to consider it every time you have a spare moment.

It might also help for you to look up people you believe exemplify your ideal, and learn some lessons from them; autobiographies/biographies aren't terrible places to start.