All of the things that we can see in the world around us as valuable and important in other people, all of them, are red herrings. They are falsehoods, they are shadows. They have to be, because of the very nature of how we perceive them, how we put them together as ideas in our heads, and also, because of what they fundamentally are.
Red herrings? Let me explain. Power is a red herring. Social value is a red herring. Congruence is a red herring. Confidence is a red herring. Status is a red herring. When I say that they are red herrings, I'm not saying they're not real factors in a social interaction. But they are red herrings inasmuch as if you chase them directly, you will never find them. You will fail. You cannot gain power by chasing power alone. You cannot gain social value by seeking it directly. If you strive for status, it will forever elude you. All you can ever achieve by working for such things, through a massive effort of willpower, is to train yourself to project an illusion of these things, all of which are incidental factors of something much deeper and more profound.
But before we examine what that factor is, let's just look for a second at why it is we believe these red herrings are so important, why we seek them and where they come from. To my mind, all these aspects of a social interaction have been elevated in our minds to the highest position of importance because they are the things you see successful people do in social situations.
Within the context of pickup, factors like status, value and congruence are pivotal and fundamental facets of a pickup artist's success. Why? Because if you map the behaviour of a successful ladies' man from the outside, they are the factors that appear decisive. Everyone does this at a basic level, myself included. I'll sometimes find myself, even now, looking at a natural player and thinking “Damn, that man is confident. He just doesn't give a ****. Wow.”
But the problem with an external analysis of human behaviour, whether it is a model of pickup or a statistical analysis of psychological data, is that by it's very nature the human animal is infinite in it's external expressions of its internal state. You cannot even list all the different things that make a man attractive, because such a list would be infinite and infinitely varied from man to man, and dependent upon the unique tastes and perspectives of the women who interact with him.
All of these red herrings are externally visible. This is because they are symptomatic of attraction, and not causal. When we look at someone's behaviour, we are analysing what we can see of them to give us clues to who they really are inside. This is an automatic response, it is how we monkeys size each other up. We are all so adept at creating a facade around us that if we all took each other at face value, evolution would favour only the greatest manipulators. This would mean that evolutionarily, we all would be card carrying psychopaths. We would be genetically hardwired so to be, and there would be no such thing as kindness or compassion, because to display such behaviour would be suicidal in a world peopled only by the profoundly selfish. But this isn't the world in which we live. Compassion is not necessarily dangerous. People are not necessarily selfish. Kindness can be a strength. Sometimes people are selfish. Sometimes they are not.
Something else, something more sophisticated, is going on under the surface. A huge factor in human social interaction is the search to find out what that deeper level is in the people we meet. This is obviously a massive factor in seduction, but only because it is a critically important factor in human interactions in general.
So we look to things like confidence, congruence, status and social value as clues to tell us something of the inner heart of a person. All of these things can, indeed, be massively unattractive. Confidence is unattractive if it is based upon an overweening ego. Congruence is unattractive if you are congruent with your cruelty. Status is unattractive if you hate the people who make up the social hierarchy underneath a person of status. Social value is unattractive if you are valuable to a detestable society.
But why do these things elude you when you seek them directly? It's very simple. They have no reality. They are concepts which we ascribe to external aspects of a person's behaviour. They are, quite simply, thoughts that you have about a person. Moreover, striving for power, status and value is a pastime as old as the human race, and perhaps older still. Everyone who believes they are not good enough does this. They always have, and they always will. So essentially, if you see someone directly seeking power or status, all that tells you about the person at a fundamental level is that they do not believe that they are good enough on their own.
That is the message that you send out, and we are all, men and women, genetically hardwired to be extremely sensitive to this message. It tells us more about the person in an instant than all the social value in the world can ever do. It tells us that they do not believe themselves worthy. They do not believe themselves complete. It tells us that there is a gaping hole inside them where their self-esteem should be. And that tells us that if we ally ourselves with that person, whether as a friend or as a lover, we are lashing ourselves to the mast of a sinking ship. Instantly, emotional alarm bells ring inside us, blaring out the message that we should get away, that we should disassociate ourselves from that person.
We experience these warning bells as revulsion. They repel us from someone. That is what it feels like to be unattracted to someone. That is where it comes from. That is why it exists as an evolutionary response.
So these things are red herrings. If you chase them, they will elude you, your friends and lovers will leave you and you will shatter yourself with loneliness and desperation. This sounds harsh, and most people do not sink to these extremes forever. But I do believe that the vast majority of people reading this will know exactly what I'm talking about from first hand experience. This is a trap that people have been falling into since the birth of humanity – people have chased the things that they feel they lack only to find those things become an ever retreating horizon.
But then – and you may all have experienced what I am about to describe – every now and then you become more. Every now and then, when you're not noticing, perhaps when you are drunk, perhaps when you are among your very good friends or perhaps when you meet someone who just puts you completely at your ease, something happens inside you. You shift, in some unknown sense, into a different mode, a mode in which people look up to you. They actually really admire you. They aren't sucking up or begging for your approval, but they rate you. They respect you. You are valuable to them. They would help you out if they could, and they would consider it an honour so to do. You get attention from the opposite sex, and you just seem to know what to do with it. Nothing is awkward, and nothing is forced. You just feel chilled, and easy, and powerful. Your jokes are funny, and you're not feeling conscious of anyone else looking at you – although you notice that you do get more attention. You just love it. You love that moment, the moment of existence. You exist in it, you live in it, and somehow it completes you.
I got this every now and then, back in the day before I knew anything of women or myself. Once in a while I'd just be 'on form'. Everything I said would work. It was so effortless, and so much fun. But I could never manufacture it. I could never reproduce it. And when I saw a woman who was, to my mind, out of my league, it would shake me. I'd become someone else. Someone worse. Someone less than I was. It happened all the time, and it happened always and only when I really, really wanted someone.
You know what I mean. Have you ever felt that the only women who want you are the ones you don't want? I got that all the time. It was relentless. It cut me up. But I could see that no matter how complex it all seemed, there was some kind of pattern to it. Something that was, at heart, really very simple. It played itself out in infinite ways, but it was always that exact pattern – if I wanted someone I'd become a bag of nervous energy and **** it all up. Something was going on that made all of my best traits into negative things that worked against me. My eloquence became pretentiousness. My confidence became arrogance. My shyness became insecurity. And always it was with the people I wanted the most to connect with.
Red herrings? Let me explain. Power is a red herring. Social value is a red herring. Congruence is a red herring. Confidence is a red herring. Status is a red herring. When I say that they are red herrings, I'm not saying they're not real factors in a social interaction. But they are red herrings inasmuch as if you chase them directly, you will never find them. You will fail. You cannot gain power by chasing power alone. You cannot gain social value by seeking it directly. If you strive for status, it will forever elude you. All you can ever achieve by working for such things, through a massive effort of willpower, is to train yourself to project an illusion of these things, all of which are incidental factors of something much deeper and more profound.
But before we examine what that factor is, let's just look for a second at why it is we believe these red herrings are so important, why we seek them and where they come from. To my mind, all these aspects of a social interaction have been elevated in our minds to the highest position of importance because they are the things you see successful people do in social situations.
Within the context of pickup, factors like status, value and congruence are pivotal and fundamental facets of a pickup artist's success. Why? Because if you map the behaviour of a successful ladies' man from the outside, they are the factors that appear decisive. Everyone does this at a basic level, myself included. I'll sometimes find myself, even now, looking at a natural player and thinking “Damn, that man is confident. He just doesn't give a ****. Wow.”
But the problem with an external analysis of human behaviour, whether it is a model of pickup or a statistical analysis of psychological data, is that by it's very nature the human animal is infinite in it's external expressions of its internal state. You cannot even list all the different things that make a man attractive, because such a list would be infinite and infinitely varied from man to man, and dependent upon the unique tastes and perspectives of the women who interact with him.
All of these red herrings are externally visible. This is because they are symptomatic of attraction, and not causal. When we look at someone's behaviour, we are analysing what we can see of them to give us clues to who they really are inside. This is an automatic response, it is how we monkeys size each other up. We are all so adept at creating a facade around us that if we all took each other at face value, evolution would favour only the greatest manipulators. This would mean that evolutionarily, we all would be card carrying psychopaths. We would be genetically hardwired so to be, and there would be no such thing as kindness or compassion, because to display such behaviour would be suicidal in a world peopled only by the profoundly selfish. But this isn't the world in which we live. Compassion is not necessarily dangerous. People are not necessarily selfish. Kindness can be a strength. Sometimes people are selfish. Sometimes they are not.
Something else, something more sophisticated, is going on under the surface. A huge factor in human social interaction is the search to find out what that deeper level is in the people we meet. This is obviously a massive factor in seduction, but only because it is a critically important factor in human interactions in general.
So we look to things like confidence, congruence, status and social value as clues to tell us something of the inner heart of a person. All of these things can, indeed, be massively unattractive. Confidence is unattractive if it is based upon an overweening ego. Congruence is unattractive if you are congruent with your cruelty. Status is unattractive if you hate the people who make up the social hierarchy underneath a person of status. Social value is unattractive if you are valuable to a detestable society.
But why do these things elude you when you seek them directly? It's very simple. They have no reality. They are concepts which we ascribe to external aspects of a person's behaviour. They are, quite simply, thoughts that you have about a person. Moreover, striving for power, status and value is a pastime as old as the human race, and perhaps older still. Everyone who believes they are not good enough does this. They always have, and they always will. So essentially, if you see someone directly seeking power or status, all that tells you about the person at a fundamental level is that they do not believe that they are good enough on their own.
That is the message that you send out, and we are all, men and women, genetically hardwired to be extremely sensitive to this message. It tells us more about the person in an instant than all the social value in the world can ever do. It tells us that they do not believe themselves worthy. They do not believe themselves complete. It tells us that there is a gaping hole inside them where their self-esteem should be. And that tells us that if we ally ourselves with that person, whether as a friend or as a lover, we are lashing ourselves to the mast of a sinking ship. Instantly, emotional alarm bells ring inside us, blaring out the message that we should get away, that we should disassociate ourselves from that person.
We experience these warning bells as revulsion. They repel us from someone. That is what it feels like to be unattracted to someone. That is where it comes from. That is why it exists as an evolutionary response.
So these things are red herrings. If you chase them, they will elude you, your friends and lovers will leave you and you will shatter yourself with loneliness and desperation. This sounds harsh, and most people do not sink to these extremes forever. But I do believe that the vast majority of people reading this will know exactly what I'm talking about from first hand experience. This is a trap that people have been falling into since the birth of humanity – people have chased the things that they feel they lack only to find those things become an ever retreating horizon.
But then – and you may all have experienced what I am about to describe – every now and then you become more. Every now and then, when you're not noticing, perhaps when you are drunk, perhaps when you are among your very good friends or perhaps when you meet someone who just puts you completely at your ease, something happens inside you. You shift, in some unknown sense, into a different mode, a mode in which people look up to you. They actually really admire you. They aren't sucking up or begging for your approval, but they rate you. They respect you. You are valuable to them. They would help you out if they could, and they would consider it an honour so to do. You get attention from the opposite sex, and you just seem to know what to do with it. Nothing is awkward, and nothing is forced. You just feel chilled, and easy, and powerful. Your jokes are funny, and you're not feeling conscious of anyone else looking at you – although you notice that you do get more attention. You just love it. You love that moment, the moment of existence. You exist in it, you live in it, and somehow it completes you.
I got this every now and then, back in the day before I knew anything of women or myself. Once in a while I'd just be 'on form'. Everything I said would work. It was so effortless, and so much fun. But I could never manufacture it. I could never reproduce it. And when I saw a woman who was, to my mind, out of my league, it would shake me. I'd become someone else. Someone worse. Someone less than I was. It happened all the time, and it happened always and only when I really, really wanted someone.
You know what I mean. Have you ever felt that the only women who want you are the ones you don't want? I got that all the time. It was relentless. It cut me up. But I could see that no matter how complex it all seemed, there was some kind of pattern to it. Something that was, at heart, really very simple. It played itself out in infinite ways, but it was always that exact pattern – if I wanted someone I'd become a bag of nervous energy and **** it all up. Something was going on that made all of my best traits into negative things that worked against me. My eloquence became pretentiousness. My confidence became arrogance. My shyness became insecurity. And always it was with the people I wanted the most to connect with.
(didn't read it yet, just skimmed), but looks like good stuff.