So, there's a thing I've been fucking up a LOT lately, and I've had a kind of a breakthrough. So I'm going to post it to get my head straight and maybe get some good feedback. It's going to be written in High Nerd so go ahead and ditch if you don't like that.

Still with me? Good. One of the things that was fucking up my ability to implement TRP concepts was a kind of pervasive frame that I get from reading various posts around here. I'm betting that frame is really useful for a lot of people, so I'm not going to bash it - I'm just going to mention that it wasn't helping me, and I found something instead that IS helping me, so maybe if you're having the same kind of trouble, this post will provide you with a new option.

I experience the frame I'm talking about as a kind of ... absurd essentialism around Redpill topics. Bob "is" a Beta. Chad "is" a Natural Alpha. All Women "are" Like That. Focusing too much on one girl "is" Oneitis.

Fuck "is". There IS no "is".

Because there is no US.

What I mean is, there are no people. Not really. There are bodies, and there are habits, and there are environments.

Imagine I'm some bearded guru meditating by a stream, and you come to me and say "Ial, why can't I change? I keep trying and trying and trying to improve but I just keep missing the mark! It's like I don't WANT to change, what the fuck is going on?"

And I sit there and stroke my beard all guru-like, and then I say something like "fetch me a bucket."

And you shrug and go do it, because I've got this killer beard and I'm meditating by a stream so of COURSE I'm going to make you do some hokey thing like fetch a bucket because that's what guru's DO.

And then I say "do you see that whirlpool in the stream?"

And you look and sure enough, there's a whirlpool in the stream.

And you say "yeah" because you don't want to get into some bullshit semantic dick-waving contest and you'd rather I'd just fucking get on with the lesson.

So I say "fetch me that whirlpool in this bucket, and bring it to me!"

And you are enlightened.

Because there IS no whirlpool. There's water, and there's the momentum of the flow from upstream, and there's the shape of the bottom of the stream. But the moment you scoop up that whirlpool into the bucket, two of those three things go away, and what you've got in the bucket is just water - no whirlpool.

You're a "beta"? No, fuck that. You're a body. You have habits. You are in an environment.

A few seconds ago your body, with your habits, in your environment, did beta-like things.

So fucking change your body. Change your habits. Change your environment.

Start by getting rid of the idea that you "are" a beta. Or an alpha. Or what-the-fuck-ever.

We grew up as a species on the African savannah. It started when some monkey stopped thinking of the rocks around it as just part of the environment, picked one up, and beaned an antelope or something over the head with it. Suddenly "rocks" were no longer just an ambient part of the environment; they were things that you could do stuff with.

But until you look around and notice what the environment is providing you with, and what your ACTUAL options are, you're stuck with the same habits and the same body that you've been living with all your life.

Even if you start working out, even if you start doing PUA shit in bars on Friday night, you're still seeing your environment and your habits as ultimately these immutable things that you just have to wrestle with.

See them instead as made of parts.

All women are like that? Sure. All women have bodies that can support habits. And in the right environment, all women will do... whatever the fuck that bitch did to you this week. Some will do it more often than others because their bodies or their habits push them more towards those situations - and remember that situations are part of the environment.

And the environment shapes our habits, which shape our bodies. Which is why we got stuck on the illusion that we "are" these essential personalities to begin with.

Sociologists have a thing that they call the Fundamental Attribution Error, which basically says that we always assume that people do things because of who they are instead of because of the environment they're in. It's an Error because it's almost always less than the whole story. It turns out people can change a LOT more than we give them credit for, if you know how to sculpt their environment differently.

Remember that YOU are part of their environment, just like they're part of yours. That's a lot of what PUA shit is teaching you to do - manipulate their environment by manipulating your place within it.

But you miss a lot of opportunity to do that if you forget that "people" are like whirlpools.

A lot of the time, we avoid looking too closely at our environment because too much change is dangerous. We could end up altering something that was keeping us alive, and then we're fucked if we don't fix it in time.

But most people err WAY too hard on the side of "don't touch shit". There's a LOT you can change in your environment, that will affect how your habits and your body interact and maintain themselves. Some of that will be good and some of that will be bad, but as long as you remember that you can manipulate your environment, you can just keep adjusting whenever you fuck up.

I mean fuck, what's the point of taking the red pill if you can't be Neo?