I’d like to know what you think of this (unfortunately long) piece arguing (persuasively IMO) that Mystery/Roissy-style PUA is solving the wrong problem and a memetic hazard.
The right thing for these guys to do would be to deal with these core issues of low self-worth feelings and their inferiority feelings so that they can fix them once and for all. What pickup teaches them to do however is not to fix feelings but instead to switch from their current faulty coping strategy, which is surrender, to another faulty coping strategy of overcompensation. Using overcompensation, they repress these unwanted feelings with defense mechanisms so that they end up blocking themselves from consciously accessing this self-hatred. They learn to rationalize away and deny their feelings of low self-worth. They learn to project away their feelings of inferiority and self-hatred onto others. (Ever wonder why pickup artists develop this fanatical hatred of beta males? It’s their hatred of the beta traits they fear still exist within themselves, so they try to destroy these unwanted traits by first projecting them onto other male targets and then destroying those other targets.) They also learn to use another defense mechanism of intellectualization to cope with these low self-worth feelings, which is where all the mental masturbation and books on evolutionary psychology, animal behavior, persuasion, sales, New Age thinking and success literature like Tony Robbins comes in (not that there’s anything inherently wrong with any of this literature but rather in the way they are being used in this speak instance as a way to avoid fixing core issues).
Shevek saw that he had touched in these men an impersonal animosity that went very deep. Apparently they.. …contained a woman, a suppressed, silenced, bestialized woman, a fury in a cage. He had no right to tease them. They knew no relation but possession. They were possessed.
The right thing for these guys to do would be to deal with these core issues of low self-worth feelings and their inferiority feelings so that they can fix them once and for all. What pickup teaches them to do however is not to fix feelings but instead to switch from their current faulty coping strategy, which is surrender, to another faulty coping strategy of overcompensation… It’s their hatred of the beta traits they fear still exist within themselves, so they try to destroy these unwanted traits by first projecting them onto other male targets and then destroying those other targets.
Don’t know about him, but I fully agree with it; I’ve read a fair amount of rants about this problem. I’ve also had my own story of dealing with low self-worth and alienation, although it didn’t end in a heterosexual relationship :)
I’d like to know what you think of this (unfortunately long) piece arguing (persuasively IMO) that Mystery/Roissy-style PUA is solving the wrong problem and a memetic hazard.
Ursula Le Guin, The Dispossessed
Don’t know about him, but I fully agree with it; I’ve read a fair amount of rants about this problem. I’ve also had my own story of dealing with low self-worth and alienation, although it didn’t end in a heterosexual relationship :)
(sorry about the troll toll, btw)