On the tail end of my recent trip, in a blur of dates, hook-ups and matches, I found myself reading a post by Kyle Trouble [1] that gave me some pause. I especially enjoyed this reflection:
“Once you become educated in the way of women, it’s natural to become a bit jaded. Over time, this passes, as I’ve discussed—you must let go. If you don’t, you’ll just end up a miserable old hack.
But learning the true nature of how male and female dynamics works does something else. You can get the women you always lusted and desired for. You can have sex with them, and you can even keep them around in a happy and fulfilling relationship. But it all comes with a trade off. Things will be different than the fantasy world that you grew up in.” [1]
The reason behind it is quite simple, Kyle hit on something that I’ve thought a lot about, especially in periods of my life when I run very active game. One of the habits I developed early was to keep rather comprehensive notes during these periods, not only to keep track of the different girls, but also because I think they are very valuable as a tool to help me improve my game. If something blows up in my face, I can go back and review, see where I went wrong and then take steps to avoid that happening again.
Let’s be fair, you can over-game, under-game, over-comfort, under-comfort, be too entertaining, not entertaining enough, too sexual or too non-sexual, horny instead of sexual and many other things. Most of these are dials that have to be adjusted based on the girl, the context, the culture and many other things. If one of my stories, or a sequence of my anecdotes is more effective at achieving my goal, I want to be able to put that into a pattern, to increase my efficiency.
So, I like my notes for this reason, they are my impressions shortly after the meeting, significant moments are recorded and I can go back, look at the variables, make my adjustments and improve. This makes me more efficient and gets me more results, however it also removes some of the organic, natural parts of the interaction. It’s a bit like playing Starcraft for fun vs. Starcraft as a pro gamer, sure the pro gamer is better at the game, but it’s all automated, there are few if any surprises in it. However, sometimes you get hit with a surprise.
What Kyle touched on, but didn’t make explicit was the trade-off between two sets of things, set 1 are the principles that make up Red Pill theory, hypergamy, solipsism, AF/BF, communication differences, the adventure bubble, escalation and such things. The second set are the dynamic variables that to some extent are both objective and subjective. These are shared among all girls, but the dials are set to varying levels, a good example would be the ovulatory shift, a girl who is in her proliferative phase can be escalated faster than a girl who is not. If she’s also got 3 drinks in her, has been without sex for a month, is in a foreign country and is under 25, she can be escalated even faster.
Starcraft has rules, and an optimal strategy, the Red Pill has principles and heuristics.
Principles and Individuality
When I did my long reading of Ethics from Aristotle to Kant, one of the core elements of ethics as a discipline was an attempt to establish objectively what is good and what is evil. As I’ve expounded on in prior essays, the study of ethics is one wrought with disagreement for how to devise principles. In deontology one starts with a rule, and one judges by intent, if your intent was good according to the rule, then the act was good. In consequentialism, one starts with the outcome, and if the outcome was good then the act was good. In virtue one starts with a set of virtues, and if behavior is in accordance with those virtues, one is a good person.
As one can easily see, the 3 of these can easily be at odds, if one sleeps with that 20 year old with the intent that both involved parties have a great one-night stand, then it is good according to deontology. If the consequence is that the 20 year old then loses her ability to pair bond with her husband and ends up divorced 5 years later and this contributes to the breakdown of the nuclear family, furthering the decline of western civ, then it was bad according to consequentialism. If lust is a vice and prudence a virtue, then by sleeping with that 20 year old, one is quite clearly being lustful, however if pleasure is a virtue and asceticism is a vice, then it is good.
However, what these 3 share is the understanding that one must have principles that act as guides for human behavior, lest we embrace chaos. If all men and women behaved as young children do, as completely self-centered beings without much concern for those other than themselves. If they as children do, viewed all other human beings as means by which to satisfy a never-ending list of demand from their ID, then I would posit that we’d have a problem functioning as a group.
This is where Smerdyakov’s statement from “The Brothers Karamazov” becomes very apparent, “If there is no God, everything is permitted“, the core truth being that if there are no principles that are greater than humanity, then what will restrain humanity from acting on its worst impulses?
After all, the role of ethical principles is to govern our behavior in the group so that we do not lead to its destruction. We get the golden rule, the 10 Commandments, and various other ethical rules so that we do not engage in acts motivated by individual benefits but that come at a great cost to the group at large. It’s the famed trade-off between Group and Individual that was subject to much writing during the Enlightenment Age, what liberties should an individual give up in order to belong to a group, which liberties can an individual never give up, and which liberties can a group never take from their members.
When used correctly, principles add paths to our map of the world, so that we know which paths we can take, which are not sound to take and which we should stay far away from. When applied as weapons however, they can rapidly destroy a great culture or group in a very short time. Too much ethics frequently translates to zealotry, such as that demonstrated by Torquemada during the Inquisition or in numerous other situations that have played out through our history when we become rigid, inflexible and righteous, where morality is used to hammer the witches, rather than guide the weary.
This is the area in which some purple pill profiteers operate, through sowing confusion by using questionable rhetoric and solipsism, they switch between rules, consequences and virtues to indoctrinate men to act as Good Boys and give up their best interest. When one argues that a lifestyle of hedonism, self-interest and indulgence is evil, the argument takes one of three forms:
Deontological:
Rule: Getting married and raising children is best for society.
Thus, one must conclude that any behavior that is not towards this end is by implication not good.
Consequentialist:
The consequences of acting in your own self-interest and eschewing marriage and children undermines Western Civilization and will lead to a more rapid decline of an already declining Western Civilization.
Virtue:
Hedonism/Lust/Self-indulgence/etc is a vice, the correct life is to build ones virtue, thus this behavior is bad.
If you look at any of the preceding arguments, notice one thing, never once is there talk of what is best for the individual. The deontological argument favors the group, as does the consequentialist, and quite frankly I’m not certain if I would say that hedonism, lust or self-indulgence are inherently bad unless done to the point of personal irrevocable harm. There is obviously a case where too much of a good thing turns that thing from a positive to a negative. However, where this line is depends very much on individual preference.
Summary and Conclusions
Back before The Red Pill, when I was just running game, it was challenging but for the most part it was a fairly easy lifestyle. The Red Pill on the other hand is not easy, because quite frankly it always forces you to do what is the least comfortable choice. If you’re still single in your 30s, 40s and 50s you face a lot of social pressure, if you’re in shape and healthy you face a society that wants you to be fat and sick. Everyone has a prescription for you, everyone is ego-invested in their prescription, and very few of them consider what is right for you.
The easiest thing a man could do in life is good grades in high school, get a good college degree and get a steady job. Get into an LTR with the first girl who’ll sleep with him, get a couple of kids, then just follow the script through to retirement and inevitable death. This is what society wants you to do regardless of what the trads tell you.
One of the things I’ve frequently criticized both in essays and on twitter is idealism, not because I think it is an inherently undesirable trait, but because I think it often clouds our judgment. Over the years I’ve spent quite a bit of time and money improving my judgment, making sure that I think things through, consider all viewpoints and have enough facts on my side to make a sound conclusion. This was necessary for the work I do in my day to day life, otherwise I would be rather poor at it. It’s easy to be swallowed up by excitement, exuberance and enthusiasm, I think this is a core part of our firmware. This is why we need to learn about ourselves to understand our own perspective apart from the group, but also why we need principles and heuristics to guide us when we cannot trust our own mind.
The principles and heuristics laid out by the Red Pill get a fair bit of criticism, just voicing some of the opinions get blowback, not only from women, but also from a wide cadre of different men, relationship coaches who depend on the red pill not being true for their income. However, they exist to safeguard men from making mistakes that can have drastic consequences to their ability to live their best possible life.
The core of this post is quite simple, it’s easy to abide by principles when they do not have pretty eyes, long, flowing hair, a pert butt and great breasts, all apparently made by girlfriend material. It’s very easy not to cheat when no girl will date you, or when no other woman than your wife/girlfriend wants to sleep with you. It’s bloody hard if you’re a rockstar with groupies throwing their panties on stage. That’s when you need principles and heuristics.
The Red Pill principles exist as a guide for men so that they can make the right choice, not the easy one.
They exist so the individual man can see if a girl is for real or an illusion created by his own mind and desires.
Sources:
[1] https://thisistrouble.com/2018/06/26/the-devil-on-my-shoulder/
