Philosophy has 5 classical branches, logic, epistemology, aesthetics, ethics and metaphysics, ranked in order of empirical foundation. Logic is the study of reasoning, often divided in deductive reasoning and inductive reasoning. The former is drawing general conclusions from specific examples, the latter is drawing logical conclusions from definitions and axioms. Epistemology is concerned with the nature and limitations of knowledge, and deals with four points, what is knowledge, how is knowledge acquired, what do people know, and how do we know what we know. Aesthetics is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of beauty and ugliness, and is sometimes referred to as the study of sentiment and taste.
Ethics is also known as moral philosophy, it’s the branch of philosophy concerned with good and bad, right and wrong, justice, virtue and all related concepts. Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of existence, and seeks to explain the fundamental nature of being and the world. Traditionally, metaphysics is divided into two branches, cosmology and ontology. The former seeks to understand the origin, evolution, structure and ultimate fate of the universe at large and the natural laws that govern it. These days this branch of philosophy is soundly placed within the STEM field. The latter, ontology deals with questions concerning which entities exist or can be said to exist, how such entitled can be grouped, organized in hierarchies, this has also been placed distinctly within the realm of science and is now empirical. After the schism that created the gap between “philosophy” and “natural philosophy (later science), metaphysics is largely concerned with the philosophical inquiry of a non-empirical character into the nature of existence.
Some people are also inclined to include political philosophy into the classical branches, this is a branch concerned with the study of concepts such as liberty, justice, property rights, law and the enforcement of a legal code by authorities, what they are, if they are needed, and many such questions. The major focus of this essay is not concerned with political philosophy, thought it is tangentially relevant to the topic, the major focus of this essay will be on logic, epistemology, ethics and the present definition of metaphysics.
The early days of the Red Pill was known as “The Seduction Community” and was concerned with investigating how men could become more successful at sexual relationships with women. For this purpose, the early pick-up artists would study men who were naturally good at getting laid, formulate theories for what these men did, test those theories through field-experiments and report the results back in field-reports in various online communities, so that other men could test if it also worked for them. The development of this body of knowledge is not much different from the development of bodybuilding or strength training where the practitioners have often been well ahead of the scientific community with their prescriptions. This became known as “bro-science” which was a derogatory term for knowledge a person obtained through practice, that would vary in its efficacy, mostly due to a lack of ability to control for important variables such as nutrition and drug use, but also due to sample problems such as using small samples (n=1) or selections of extreme outliers.
From day one the most important factor in game and red pill theory is the structure of “What do we observe”, “Why does it work” and “How can this be practically applied”. The explanation and theory only serves a purpose in how it influences practice. “Cocky & Funny”, “DHV”, “Negs” and “False disqualifiers” are all under the umbrella of “Amused Mastery”, when practitioners identified the former, deductive reasoning allowed Rollo to go from specific behavioral examples to a general conclusion and thus theory [1].
There has been a push recently to include metaphysics (by definition 3) and ethics in red pill theory as of late, and I’ve written a bit here to illustrate on why I think that this is a questionable idea.
Reproductive Marxism Three Ways
The best way of illustrating what I’ve themed “The Red Pill Ethics and Metaphysics” problem is to illustrate how one can arrive at 3 different positions using the exact same starting point, namely reproductive marxism in an ethical argument. A short summary and definition of reproductive Marxism is “A social structure that normalizes the normal volatility of reproductive outcomes“, to summarize it, reproductive Marxism, as general Marxism seeks to uncouple inputs from outputs. Monogamous marriage for instance is a methodology to ensure that no single male is capable of realizing above average reproductive outcomes by monopolizing women. By declaring by law that no man may marry more than one woman, furthermore that sex is not permissible outside of the union of marriage, one creates a regulation on sex, that limits it’s availability in the market.
- From a social or civilization perspective, this has many benefits. It ensures provision for women and children, it gives children a home environment with both a father and mother. It secures male investment in the social order, as they have an incentive to plant trees in the shade of which they will never sit. It ensures that a society does not have a large group of men who are unable to reproduce, thus are less likely to contribute the social order, and may even seek to destroy the present social order. The downside of such an organization is that it limits individual liberty and control over sexuality and it limits individual choice in mates. Should women and men not be free to select how they wish to enact their reproduction?
- From the evolutionary perspective, the goal of natural selection is to ensure that the most adaptable survive, this serves the function of ensuring that a species survives in it’s strongest form to enter the next round of competition. This is somewhat simplified, but who we chose to mate with influences what genetic traits are passed on to the next generation, and how we elect to raise our children and the environment in which we do, further influences the next round of reproductive March madness. In order to ensure that our species has the best chances of succeeding in subsequent generations, it would therefore be sensible to ensure that the most fit individuals reproduce maximally and the least fit individuals reproduce minimally.
- From the individual perspective it would be most sensible to leave to each individual the maximum amount of free choice and control over their own reproduction. Reproductive capability is something which we all are born with, and that is intimately our own. It would be difficult that anything, except perhaps our own inner world is more intimately our own than our ability to reproduce.
Which one of these positions create the most pleasure with the least pain? This would be the basic utilitarian argument, where one bases the choice on which scenario results in the highest degree of utility, where utility is defined in terms of “the well-being of sentient entities”. To exemplify, under 1, a woman may have to marry a man who she views as a non-optimal mate, which would cause her pain, however if the man would been otherwise unmarried it will cause him pleasure. Thus, one must determine to which degree the man’s pleasure balances the woman’s suffering. If one takes a highly reproductively fit man, who may have had a harem under other social structures, who now has to settle for having only one partner, this will cause him suffering, however it will most likely cause the woman who gets to be the only mate of such a man pleasure.
From a perspective of ethics, which one of the situations above would be good, and which would be bad?
Metaphysics of Mating
From a metaphysical perspective one has to begin with the outcomes of mating, one would be inclined to argue that while the sexual need is defined by Maslow as a basic need, for many people having and raising children is also a major part of their self-actualization. Furthermore, for many, life without having children would be less meaningful than with children. If one asks about the nature of existence perhaps the first question is whether this nature is a collectively shared experience or an individual one.
One can easily reduce mating to a mixture of physics and chemistry, from a purely materialistic perspective it’s largely a question of friction and subsequent chemical reactions. It’s not that complicated really if we take a very empirical and materialistic perspective on the act itself and subsequent consequences. The act is after all a consequence of chemical reactions in the brain as a result of outside stimuli that elicits a physical reaction (arousal) that leads to a subsequent event (mating) which leads to two potential outcomes, pregnancy or no-pregnancy, which themselves lead to subsequent events.
One can also view mating from a psychological perspective, after all as humans we are prone to imbuing events and actions with more than just the physical, our consciousness and psychology adds to the events. We thus introduce “love”, “good”, “bad”, “naughty”, “nice”, “joy”, “satisfaction” disappointment and many other such factors into the purely materialistic act. Thus, the act is transformed to something more than the ontological perspective, and it may even cross-over into the cosmological perspective, do the concepts in the past sentence actually exist or are they merely figments of our minds?
Thirdly, one could view mating from a spiritual perspective. Man meets woman, a series of chemical reactions take place in their brains as a result of that stimuli, subsequently physical reactions happen in their bodies as a result of their brain, and arousal takes place. The pair sneaks off for a naughty moment behind the concession stand at the festival and emerge giggling feeling elated. They fall in love, marry and have children that they find their higher purpose in raising.
From a perspective of metaphysics, which of the situations above is the correct description?
Summary and Conclusions
The problem I aimed to illustrate with this essay is the mixing of what can be argued as an empirical inquiry based in reason with subjective elements such as ethics or the non-empirical inquiry into the nature of existence as per metaphysics. We all have moral and metaphysical frameworks and beliefs that we use to govern our lives, but these must be compartmentalized when attempting to isolate “What is real”. Game and The Red Pill evolved to give men a framework that they were lacking for intersexual dynamics that would enable them to navigate the sexual market place governed by reason and empiricism over emotion and illusion, so that they may elect to act in a manner that is conducive to their rational self-interest and not through lack of knowledge or methodology act in a manner that undermines their best interest.
The trouble with modern metaphysics as separate from ontology or cosmology, as the non-empirical inquiry into the nature of existence is that at best it will be a rationalist inquiry based on inductive reasoning, and at worst it will be a case of intellectual masturbation that is wholly subjective, where “what is” has been replaced by “what I think should be“. This is also very much my position on ethics, they have their use naturally, as human cooperation requires a framework to govern those interactions, a society in which murder and theft were permitted, would rapidly descend into chaos. However, one of the major developments in moral philosophy is that morality is an invention of man, not of a divine creator, and thus a matter of “what should be” or “what functions best” rather than “what is”.
When one mixes that which is created as a framework based in objectivity, empiricism and reason with that which is more easily influenced by the subjective factors of metaphysics and morals, one can very easily undermine the framework itself. One clearly sees this is the declining brand value of “Science”, “Scholarship” and “Academia”. Science, Scholarship and Academia, have given us penicillin, the internet, electrical power and have done more to improve our standard of living as a species than anything or anyone else. However, it has also given us gender studies, eugenics, and Marxism. Any field of knowledge has a sword of Damocles hanging overhead, for once it is no longer producing outcomes that have value, that field dies.
The present state of academia is a consequence of joining scholarship with morals and metaphysics resulting in distancing the findings of researchers from what people can see is reality and what practitioners experience. The way research is supposed to work is that an observation leads to a question, a question leads to studying the literature, the observation, question and literature leads to the formulation of a theory, the theory is then tested by experiment and refined until the theory explains the observation once this point is reached one has a conclusion. If an observation is made that contradicts the theory, then the theory must be amended and the conclusion updated.
What often happens is this process in reverse. One begins with a conclusion, then formulate a theory to support the conclusion, verify this theory through an experiment that is designed specifically to do so, cherry-picks literature to support the question, and then rigidly holds to the position regardless of observations to the contrary. This is how one ends up with studies, and an academic consensus that both practitioners and casual observers know is erroneous.
A note:
I recently launched a Patreon page where I will be posting additional content every month for those who support me and I will do a Google Hangout for the highest tier Patrons (limited to 10 people).
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Sources
[1] https://therationalmale.com/2012/09/14/amused-mastery/
