This is a follow up to Principles and Pride.
As we saw, principles are conscious decision rules. They are a special form of opinions, namely those who give a personal sense of justice or moral value. For example, you may refuse to plow because it feels bad. You may want to be honest about your intentions because you believe it's the right thing to do.
But we don't adhere to principles simply because they may provide a strategic benefit. Principles require conviction, and conviction doesn't come for free. The question we must ask then, is where does this conviction come from? The answer lies in generalizing what we have encountered so far. Factual beliefs and opinions come together in large memeplexes, and they shape a personal world view. I will call such memeplexes perspectives.
Some perspectives are so profoundly important that they are rediscovered over and over again. They underlie much of the implicit assumptions in everyday conversations, ranging from existential meaning, moral values, politics, religion, and of course, sex.
In this post, I will present the core memes of the new paradigm I am presenting to you. As a perspective on life, they are all general and have profound implications for interpretation, decision making, and behavior. The core five perspectives are: existential duality, mindfulness, the principles of choice and respect, success isolation, and core stability. I will present the four first here, the fifth is relevant to the process of implementing new memes ("the learning process") and will be given in the proper context.
Existential Duality
An enormous amount of people's disagreements are based on one sole difference in perspective. In turn, it leads to different interpretations, decisions, and behavior in everyday life. The perspective amounts to whether we relate the world to our subjective, personal experience of it, or whether we analyze it objectively, as an outside observer.
Before getting deeper into the issue. I want to make a short presentation of typical assumptions and reasoning behind each of the perspectives.
The Subjective/Emotional Perspective
We are all born as blank slates that can be moulded into anything possible: bullies, victims, alpha males, losers, and homosexuals. Parents, teachers, and society then bears the responsibility for shaping us as we grow up. In the process of reaching adulthood, the soul presumably takes control of our otherwise mechanical body, giving us free will. And with free will, comes responsibility for our actions. Since our souls possess the power to make choices, our destinies are not predetermined.
Also, since we are born empty, every emotion, behavior, and reaction we express are in some way learnt, for example through imitation, conditioning, or explanation. Hence, beauty, fear, attraction, and love are all culturally relative: we cannot understand other people and cultures through our own eyes, only through their perspective. Stereotypes and other categorizations are arbitrary. They give no addition information besides from what is already stated. In particular, every difference between men and women must be due to the environment. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Truth depends on perspective. Everything is relative.
We humans are distinct from all other life in fundamental ways, and much too complex to ever fully understand. Human thinking cannot be simulated by an algorithm, and hence human reasoning, creativity, and consciousness can never be implemented on a machine. Human life is and will always remain a mystery.
Because of relativism and irreducible complexity, things only make sense from a personal perspective. We must relate everything to our personal experiences.
The Objective/Logical Perspective
We are biological robots created through our coding instructions, the genes, and it is these that program our emotions, behaviors, and reactions. Since we have all the instructions needed to react to our environments, free will is an illusion created by the complexity of our brains' computations. Given an environment, we are genetically predisposed to act in a certain way.
Biological evolution is the genes' struggle for survival, and since the genes have evolved to solve adaptive problems in the past, humans have evolved and inherited the same solutions. Hence, beauty, fear, attraction, and love are universal across all cultures. We can and should understand others through our own eyes; there is absolute truth and moral. Men and women have faced different adaptive problems when it comes to mate selection, and so we should expect them to exhibit different but predictable emotions and behaviors.
What separates humans from other life forms is the level of complexity, and although an enormous challenge, it can and will be solved as we slowly unfold the various cognitive modules of the brain. Human life is a scientific problem like all others, unique only in its remarkable challenge.
Because of absolutism and reducible complexity, knowledge, and hence useful information, can only be acquired from an objective perspective. We must always take an independent observers point of view when learning new things.
These two memeplexes are quite the opposite of each other. They each address some fundamental questions about our essence: nature vs nurture, determinism vs indeterminism, absolutism vs relativism, algorithmic vs free will.
The fundamentals (nature/nurture, determinism, relativism, free will) are rarely mixed in any arbitrary combination, precisely because they easily become inconsistent. Nature is closer to genetical determinism, whereas nurture to indeterminism. Absolutism assumes the existence of a universal structure, whereas relativism rejects it. Structures are thought to be more or less predictable, and we end up having determinism again. The question of free will directly relates to determinism, because most people intuitively understand that a mechanistic universe, obeying predictable laws of nature, cannot give rise to free will. (Some logical people go one step further, noticing that random processes in the universe will only give rise to random will, certainly not free will.)
What I am arguing for is not that people consciously are aware of these assumptions, but that they typically use them in conversations without even question their truth. Through analysis and reasoning, it is hard to avoid some of the observations made in the second perspective (such as the rejection of free will interpretation made by most people). On the other hand, many people don't like long chains of reasoning: they prefer relying on direct first hand experience, intuition, and common sense, which all undoubtedly conclude that we have free will.
Since people dislike inconsistency (for good reasons), they don't hold both these perspectives simultaneously. People typically choose a mix of both, but certainly with a bias towards either based on how emotional vs logical their thinking is.
The logical perspective is about insight and knowledge. It is about looking at people as a scientist, and as always, the scientist should be separated from the experiment, which in this case is humanity. The logical perspective is very efficient when one needs to break down and understand what's going on. People can be understood in terms of probabilities and statistics. Solutions to typical social problems can be developed based on rational foresight. Various behaviors can be analyzed and interpreted in the right context.
The very strength in the logical perspective lies in its ability to separate yourself from what you are observing, and it is precisely this separation that so happens to be its biggest weakness too. The perspective offers great insight into the world outside of yourself, but virtually nothing about your own mind. Logical analysis can tell you why you feel in a certain way, but it has limited abilities actually making you feel differently.
On the other hand, the emotional perspective gives an incredible spectrum of colors to the world as you perceive it (relativism, again). It's a path to learn more about your own emotions: your experience of them, what they are trying to tell you, and how you should deal with it. It can help you overcome your fears and limiting beliefs. Developing in this way can make you feel more alive, bring more happiness and hence emotional state, and give you a deeper sense of consciousness.
However, the emotional perspective is also the opposite of the logical in terms of contribution: it does a poor job of analyzing the outside world, because it would rather ignore it when it doesn't correspond to your sense of reality.
As you may already suspect, the subjective and objective perspectives are both common among PUAs: typically, outer game guys tend to prefer the objective perspective whereas inner game guys tend to prefer the subjective one.
As you already know, I oppose myself both the inner and outer game paradigms, and it then makes sense that I would suggest leaving this dichotomy too. The way out is not to make a compromise between the two (as previously mentioned, this adds nothing new), but to be able to quite fully switch between them when appropriate. Here, "appropriate" refers to personal fitness: when you need to analyze, take the logical perspective. When you need to relate on a personal level, take the emotional perspective.
Switching can be difficult because the two perspectives are in sharp contrast to each other. Whenever there is a continuous transition from more external/analytical to more internal/emotional experience, there needs to be a binary threshold where one does a complete switch from the logical to emotional perspective (or vice versa). This is precisely why people who strongly adhere to one of these perspectives resist the opposite view, even when it makes sense to account for it. Switching too early doesn't make sense, because it would mean a loss of identity. Switching too late, i.e. resisting, means we don't get new insights.
Being an extremely logical person myself, I have had difficulties coping with the emotional perspective, on pretty much every level: personal, philosophical, and logical. It is only through my close relationship with FMI, my old LTR HB_hairdresser, and my current one, HB_coala, that I have come to discover the true power of the emotional perspective.
The key, to me, was to understand that whatever perspective we take, it is only a perspective, because the world is just the way it is. Reality doesn't change according to my perspectives. Only I change through my perspectives. The world is still the same, but I am not.
Whether I choose to relate to things personally or scientifically depends on how well those things connect with my core memeplex. It is only a question of whether the new memes should end up inside my core memeplex or in another memeplex with less personal value (see my first memetics post). In other words, if the new meme is very interesting, useful, or makes perfect sense with what I already value, I will relate to it personally. Otherwise, I will only understand it logically and introduce the new meme into another memeplex where it makes sense outside of the important things of my life.
The next memeplex will further clarify the switching between emotional and logical perspectives.
Mindfulness
The past cannot be changed, you can only learn from it. We can and should learn from it by analyzing it. We should take a logical perspective on past events. Never regret the things you've done: learn from your mistakes, but don't let them put you down. What can't be changed doesn't matter, and the past is a perfect example of something that can't be changed. Again,
the past should be analyzed with logic.
The future can only be predicted (correctly or incorrectly). We should plan our future using a logical perspective, based on our emotional preferences.
The moment can only be experience through emotions, not yet understood (as it takes several milliseconds to understand something consciously/logically). We should thus experience it with our emotional perspective when it fills us with positive emotions, or negative emotions that will ultimately give us something we will benefit from. When negative emotions don't serve a meaningful purpose to us, we should block them by switching to a logical perspective. This is done by acknowledging the situation, but observing it from the outside, only as an interesting phenomena worthy of further analysis (since it would normally have given you negative emotions, it is certainly worth to understand the situation logically).
So when I am writing to you here, I am mainly in logical mode because I'm analyzing my past experiences and current knowledge. Be sure however, that I am in emotional mode when kissing a beautiful girl or having sex. When something feels good, I am in emotional mode. When something ought to feel bad, I am in logical "protected" mode. And sometimes they can be mixed: when I lost my old LTR, one of the most important people in my life, I was happy thinking about how much more freedom this would give me to reach new heights in my development. At the same time, I logically understood that the price I had to pay for this growth was the ties that bound us. She could not understand why I didn't share her agony, but now you do: it is because I felt the positive emotions and understood the negative consequences.
Similarly, you may have both positive and negative emotions at the same time. The productive thing to do then is to focus on feeling the positive ones, while logically acknowledging the negative ones.
Think of your thoughts and emotions as a stream of consciousness. Most thoughts and emotions follow the next one. You are standing in a bar and you see a gorgeous girl. Your stream goes:
Hot girl. Feel attraction. Want sex. Need conversation. Need to approach. Feel nervous. Don't know what to say. May get rejected. Feel very nervous. Approach bad idea. Drink in the bar better (break out of this stream into another one)
See how your emotions controls the reasoning here? Since the emotions are negative, the reasoning is counter productive. The logical perspective doesn't remove your AA, because you are observing your environment as an outsider. You are the experimenter, they are the lab. You are separated from them. The perspective creates a gap that you will need to remove, typically using a canned opener (after all, this would be the obvious choice from a logical perspective).
Instead you could control the stream in this way:
Hot girl. Feel attraction. Want sex. Want to share reality. Want approach. Feel nervous. Feel attraction. Want approach. Want to share reality (opener starts here)
Here, you disconnect your negative emotions of fear by focusing on the positive emotion of attraction instead. That is, you must of course consider your attraction for someone as a positive thing, not as something that needs to be suppressed. The feeling is "I'm attracted to her, is she also attracted to me?". This is why you need to embrace her choice based on her attraction for you (see Principles and Pride). Then, you focus on what you want to do: approach to get to know her.
There is a belief that we need to feel pain and be sad in order to appreciate happiness. This is an good example of a meme that is false, provides you with negative fitness, but sounds good and hence has positive fitness itself. This latter fact means it is able to spread fast, which it does.
Although it is true that we need to experience variations to feel differences, i.e. "ups and downs", there is nothing that says that our "downs" have to be negative on the happiness-scale. On a scale -10 to 10, where -10 means extremely negative emotions (e.g. extreme sadness or anger), 0 indifference, and 10 complete happiness, there is nothing wrong with having a variation ranging from +5 to +10. That idea that we need to go down to -8 in order to experience +8 is a stupid zero-sum assumption of happiness, which creates social hierarchies where the least happy people are the ones with highest status, an example of a memeoid.
The Principles of Choice and Respect
Reality is something you discover, not develop. Reality is what it is, not what you or anyone else thinks it ought to be.
Trying to develop is what people are trying to do when they insist on everyone else having the same perspectives as themselves. You shouldn't motivate those who don't want to be motivated, and you shouldn't change those who don't want to change.
And you shouldn't make those who don't like you like you, whether they are girls or guys. You want people (and therefore girls) to choose or reject you based on your core memeplex. The principle of choice states that you should always embrace peoples choices of investing in you. This is much stronger than simply accepting other people's choices: acceptance is passive, embracement is active, you are actively giving the other person the choice: you or not you.
Peoples priorities is not something you should try to change, only discover. If you don't like the way they prioritize, you have two choices: leave them or let them know what you feel (show them your principles). The principle of respect states that you should show people your social rules (principles), and find out theirs. If they are too incompatible, compromise is not the solution. Instead, you move on, knowing it wasn't meant to be. And as long as there is compatibility, escalation can take place.
Discovering means taking things for what they are: some people will love you, others will hate you, and that is something you will appreciate.
Some things you'll discover are good, others are bad. This is where choice comes in: take what you like, and leave the rest. As Zan puts it, move towards beauty and away from things that are not. Take things for what they are. Never complain. Never let the bad things put you down. If something makes you feel worse, then why is it still in your life? Leave it behind. If you can't, then ask yourself what you can do. And if you still have a problem but truly believe you've done the best you can, then don't worry because the problem can't go away now!
Success Isolation [credit: Yusha.p]
You have a personality, filled with things that people may like and dislike. Do we have strengths and weaknesses, that is, can we really talk about some things being bad and others good? We can, if we choose to view our memes in terms of good and bad. We tend to do so for sure, but should we? It depends on the purpose.
We should never use our previous accomplishments, or our current successes, as an ego booster to achieve our future goals. Using the fact that you've closed a hundred girls may sound like a good idea to reduce your AA and feel confident during your next approach. The problem is simple: this prediction is as incorrect as it could be. In practice, boosting your confidence through good emotions from previous experiences has the exact opposite effect: it gives you more AA and hesitation!
This is because when you stimulate yourself based on previous success stories, you are tricking your mind into believing it has achieve an enormous amount of success, hence boosting your ego (remember what I've previously mentioned about the research on confidence due to Barkow?). With confidence built on your previous successes, your mind now feels that you are on top. It then becomes a terrible idea to take further risks considering the expected payoff: If you succeed with the next girl, you will only confirm what others already believe to be true: that you are a ladies man. On the other hand, if you fail, they will be disappointed, and your status will diminished. Since your confidence is built on this perception of status, it too will be decreased (again, by Barkow). The fear of status loss translates into fear of rejection, and there you have AA. You've lost before you've even begun.
This leads to the somewhat counter-intuitive realization that we can never let our long term well being (e.g. confidence, state) depend on our past achievements. We must go back to simplicity: the realization that each girl is a separate situation, that the one in front of you right now has nothing to do with the girls you had yesterday.
Yusha.p is the one who came to this realization.
In terms of existential duality, it is of course fine to enjoy your memories of successes, but it is important that the enjoyment stays in the moment you are enjoying them. Memories are not a form of therapy to increase your confidence. Past and present successes need to be emotionally isolated in terms of confidence. However, you should also learn from past experiences, in terms of causality, which amounts to using the logical perspective of bringing information gathered from your past into future decisions.
In my next post, I will present the fifth core and discuss the process of reprogramming oneself with the core five perspectives.
Any comments welcome.
3 kommentarer:
Oracle, good to see that you have continued to write your blog as I always gained great insight when reading your posts from before.
Can I link to it?
I am at alphawolfx.blogspot.com.
-Richard.
I just have a general comment about the concept of memetics.
I hadn't come across this concept before but I must say it's spot on! I studied pedagogy at university and we were introduced to many ideas on how the human-being creates its understanding of the surrounding world.
I thought I'd mention some of the concepts that seem to be very close to the one about memetics.
First of all we have dialectics which describes the relation between the subject (the individual) and the object (reality). Dialectics explains to us that there is a constant evolving relationship between the two since the object is ever-evolving. The subject is always moving closer to the object thanks to the knowledge it accumulates about the latter.
Now, this concept (very briefly and not very justly described above, wiki it!) might not seem to have a strong connection to memetics(or to some, it might) but there is something called Ackumulation vs. Assimilation which is based upon dialectics.
Acumulation vs. Assimilation is a description of how the human being learns and evolves. According to this concept everyone has a so called 'Schemata' which is their map of the world (sound familiar?). This schemata is not constant, it's is always changing. When a person discovers something that contradicts their schemata i.e. it doesn't fit into the logical view that one has develop to explain the world around one with, the person experiences Acomodation. This could also be linked to what has been described as incongruency but in this case not only limited to conflicting ideas about one's own personality, but conflicting ideas, or memes, about basically anything.
At this stage, the mind needs to resolve this situation by acquiring new knowledge that explains this conflict. Once we have done this, once we can explain it and fit it into our schemata, we have achieved Assimilation (and in greater scale maybe even Satori or Enlightenment?).
I know, it's kinda off-topic but still, I thought it was worth mentioning that these ideas have been discussed in other forms in other contexts.
I think its interesting that you manage to touch on so many different subjects while still proving how very related they are.
What I miss in the litterature world of PUA is a book that can rightfully claim to be based on science but still explain it in a very practical and PUA focused manner. Can you also see the glitch in the market?
Sure, many books claim to be scientific in their approach like Ventuain Arts etc... but the techings in that book severly needs to be updated to be in better sync with the new and emerging ideas that are out there in the world of PUA today. Sure, expensive videos of guys bragging about their accomplishments can be entertaining but come on, give us some substance!
Keep up the good work!
Danilo, Mocoso, Nicolas
Another great post.
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