The Ravings: January 21, 2010 - Poor Advice
I feel like I should write a diary entry, but I think about it and there's nothing. Usually, when I write them, I just have something I want to splurge on and halfway through I decide it's a diary entry. Well, not so tonight. Tonight I want to write a diary entry, but my thoughts are far from being in order. Nor do I really want to put them in order.
I'm mostly watching my impulses and providing myself with a running commentary on them and otherwise just... letting stuff happen.
On an unrelated front, though, baeraad has been screaming his head off recently and I feel like I ought to construct a real response, rather than the pithy half-hearted chimes I've been indulging myself in. He has this giant shtick about the Nice Guy meme (wtf?) and all that.
It occurs to me that, from the seduction community to the less technical but nevertheless earnest other-guy-in-the-bar, the advice for guys into relationships can be summed up as "Dude, she might say yes".
That makes me unspeakably sad. I mean, sure, there's the deal with getting over this or that in yourself... that's just liquid courage, though, whether the liquids are liquor or chemicals.
Aaaand that's it. Fastball special, hope you don't strike out, plans are useless, just cruise in and cross your fingers.
Really.
That's it. Sure, there's kino and mirroring and negs and wingmen and NLP and *yawn*. But fascinatingly, I don't remember reading a single word about seeing what the girl responds to. No one seems to be capable of giving advice that involves, I don't know... critical thinking? Treating women as individuals? As something more than limbic systems with a couple extra parts attached, bonus a phone number?
No.
Let's go Campbellian with this. Here's the monomyth. Guy isn't getting any action, or guy is fixated on some lady, or whatever, and complains about it. And what does monoadvice look like? Step 1. Reassure the guy that women are not goddesses. Step 2. Tell the guy to step up and be courageous. Step 3. Slap him on the back a couple times for good measure.
Guh? Now, it's true that there's a built-in assumption here that makes it work. That's that most people are socially well-adjusted and will figure out all the rest of the stuff subconsciously. And they do, often enough that the fact that the original mythic cycle of advice isn't actually very useful never comes up. It gets reapplied to guys who are between women, who are in relationships, all of them. So it's not just women who are one-dimensional, it's men, too! Wait, I'm supposed to be surprised here. Oh well.
Ick.
The problem is that there's a fanatical dependence on the magic of learning to be social. That's something that "just happens". You're supposed to figure out on the playground with the other kids--you know, before puberty? That, and English class. There's no sense of character. No sense of what a personality is. No shape or form of what makes us human. No grappling with the essence of a person.
You know: all that fun stuff that happens when you "fall in" love. When you start grokking someone so deeply that to live as them, to drink them in, isn't merely a poetic way of putting it, but something perfectly sensible and simple.
Hm.
I guess this qualifies as a diary entry now.
I wish I'd figured this out ten years ago.
I'm mostly watching my impulses and providing myself with a running commentary on them and otherwise just... letting stuff happen.
On an unrelated front, though, baeraad has been screaming his head off recently and I feel like I ought to construct a real response, rather than the pithy half-hearted chimes I've been indulging myself in. He has this giant shtick about the Nice Guy meme (wtf?) and all that.
It occurs to me that, from the seduction community to the less technical but nevertheless earnest other-guy-in-the-bar, the advice for guys into relationships can be summed up as "Dude, she might say yes".
That makes me unspeakably sad. I mean, sure, there's the deal with getting over this or that in yourself... that's just liquid courage, though, whether the liquids are liquor or chemicals.
Aaaand that's it. Fastball special, hope you don't strike out, plans are useless, just cruise in and cross your fingers.
Really.
That's it. Sure, there's kino and mirroring and negs and wingmen and NLP and *yawn*. But fascinatingly, I don't remember reading a single word about seeing what the girl responds to. No one seems to be capable of giving advice that involves, I don't know... critical thinking? Treating women as individuals? As something more than limbic systems with a couple extra parts attached, bonus a phone number?
No.
Let's go Campbellian with this. Here's the monomyth. Guy isn't getting any action, or guy is fixated on some lady, or whatever, and complains about it. And what does monoadvice look like? Step 1. Reassure the guy that women are not goddesses. Step 2. Tell the guy to step up and be courageous. Step 3. Slap him on the back a couple times for good measure.
Guh? Now, it's true that there's a built-in assumption here that makes it work. That's that most people are socially well-adjusted and will figure out all the rest of the stuff subconsciously. And they do, often enough that the fact that the original mythic cycle of advice isn't actually very useful never comes up. It gets reapplied to guys who are between women, who are in relationships, all of them. So it's not just women who are one-dimensional, it's men, too! Wait, I'm supposed to be surprised here. Oh well.
Ick.
The problem is that there's a fanatical dependence on the magic of learning to be social. That's something that "just happens". You're supposed to figure out on the playground with the other kids--you know, before puberty? That, and English class. There's no sense of character. No sense of what a personality is. No shape or form of what makes us human. No grappling with the essence of a person.
You know: all that fun stuff that happens when you "fall in" love. When you start grokking someone so deeply that to live as them, to drink them in, isn't merely a poetic way of putting it, but something perfectly sensible and simple.
Hm.
I guess this qualifies as a diary entry now.
I wish I'd figured this out ten years ago.