There aren't many songs that touch me on an emotional level and most of them have something to do with violent revolution, raising the black flag, and cutting throats. But this song by Lostprophets, particularly in combination with the brilliantly sardonic video, is an excellent multimedia explication of the limits of the utility of Game as practiced by the pick-up artist.
I distinctly remember when the overwhelming feeling of "it's not enough" hit me like a freight train. It was the moment that the all the excitement and enjoyment derived from living life to what was supposed to be the fullest faded. No matter how we try, no matter what heights of ecstasy we reach or what depths of depravity we plum, Man simply isn't designed to live hedonistically and thrive for long. I don't say this to denigrate Game, only to remind those who study it that it is tool, not an objective, and remind those who are high on their first successful experience and application of the red pill that it cannot serve as a philosophy or a way of life.
Note for non-English viewers: the two-fingered gesture when the singer shouts "ha" at the beginning is basically the equivalent of a middle finger. It's powerful in its bitterness and cynicism, particularly the juxtaposition between the innocence of the three young girls dancing and the decided non-innocence of the three older ones doing the same. But the most poignant image, at least for me, is during the "Sharing is Caring" section, when the young presenting star, jaded and bored, pores out alcohol for the sexy cat-girl who is trying to interest him to lap up, only to look away and sigh as she does so. Nothing, not even sex with attractive and eager young women in animal costumes, seems to be worth the effort anymore.
"Save your sympathy
Who do you think you're fooling?
Everything is dead
Now you welcome me to a town called hypocrisy"
It is true that adulthood and maturity are drenched with hypocrisy, because we are all largely incapable of living up to our ideals, morals, and standards. But that doesn't mean that wallowing forever in that point between childhood and adult is desirable, or even possible. With regards to Game, it is perfectly understandable that gammas and deltas might look at the decadent world of the alpha and think it looks like paradise, complete with 72 cheerfully compliant non-virgins, but that is as much of an illusion as the world of the blue pill.
36 comments:
It's true that the ennui point exists for most if not all people. But what I'm coming to realize is that the point of optimum hedonic rebound for people doesn't seem to go all the way back to monogamy for many. Where you end up seems to have a genetic component. Many people can just add meaning but stay "in the life." I don't see guys like Krauser or Mark Manson ever hitting that point like you did, even they're they're doing full on "Game". Other guys like Cedonulli are hitting that point all the time, and just as constantly changing it up to find the next crest. Often by deliberately adding unnecessary difficulty. And still others appear to have a much higher tolerance for meaninglessness, although it's not limitless.
It's an interesting video they shot. Demonstrates nicely just how much the English Rose is blighted.
Wow. Now I know how Edward Cullen's life is. Terrible. No wonder vampires get all sparkly and evil.
I have a sense from reading Roissy's essays that he's a pretty shrewd fellow and realizes what Vox is saying here, about how the party cannot last. I wonder if he is in his hedonic Augustinian stage right now, and may someday have a conversion experience. It wouldn't surprise me.
Sin has pleasure for a season, not forever.
"For in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.
I said in my heart, “Come now, I will test you with pleasure; enjoy yourself.” But behold, this also was vanity.
I said of laughter, “It is mad,” and of pleasure, “What use is it?”
I searched with my heart how to cheer my body with wine—my heart still guiding me with wisdom—and how to lay hold on folly, till I might see what was good for the children of man to do under heaven during the few days of their life." - Ecclesiastes
I believe I commented on this before, to paraphrase, "Man does not live by vagina alone." 1 2 3
Charity work becomes you Vox.
Damn Vox. The videos and the song kicks ass because its true. Seems you find the British bands we have never heard of. We live in the backwaters of the not yet colonies. Brits are funny, Monty Python and the Holy Grail are still a Family favorite. The Nun's are especially amusing. Proves game works for even Sir Galahad. I regret to admit I would have pillaged the nun's who wanted to be spanked first.
Just kidding on the damn you. Sorry. You do God's work in your own way. You do bring up a very salient point. At some point a truly thinking Man who is humbled if he really thinks it through, realizes there are eternal issues that he either accepts or rejects. I've had my children. Hedonism has no allure for me now at this point. Unless the Wife wants to get freaky. My best wishes are that Roissy sees the truth.
Game just is. Certainly in today's society, I can certainly understand those who choose hook-ups and flings over LTRs and marriage. If the culture is so decayed and beyond saving, it's actually a logical response, especially for the raw deal men get today in traditional relationships. However, Game is absolutely essential to healthy LTRs too. From my own experience, it can save seemingly-doomed relationships.
Very pleased to finally see Dalrock added to the blogroll.
If you don't object to extremely vulgar metaphors, Tool also makes the point of "No matter how we try, no matter what heights of ecstasy we reach or what depths of depravity we plum, Man simply isn't designed to live hedonistically and thrive for long."
When civilizations approach the end of an epoch cultures start to unravel. The unraveling is part and parcel of traditional mores being abandoned. Man can't exist in a moral vacuum so people search for something to replace the old traditions. We are seeing the failure of this search play out as always, because people forget that for every success there can be a hundred failures. While this is one way to engineer solutions (Edison and the light bulb) it is a dismal failure for society because humans just aren't built to be in constant flux. "Game" can either be a new moral code (as many mistake it within and without the community) or a tool used by those aware of how the system has broken down and used to fix it as it relates to them. Just like a wrench and a bolt, there is such a thing as using too much of the tool.
Vox's is post is as important a dispatch as any in the game community, and a timely one. It speaks of a topic that has piqued my interest from the start.
Game 1.0 is conducive to pick-up and wild-oat sowing. It is a simple ethos that grabs 15- to 25-year-olds by the lapels and kicks them in the ass and sends them in the right direction. It is not exclusive to age, of course, depending on how much of one's youth was wasted on beta ballslessness.
Game 2.0 appeals to 30- to 40-year-old men, the veterans of female conquest back from the battlefield. It factors into its ethos the pussy ennui exemplified by the video above, and it speaks more broadly about manliness, accomplishment beyond vag, and legacy in general.
In such a new field, there is no endgame to Game 1.0 yet, only the ramping up of quantitative measures of success until the end-state forces itself upon the individual PUA, separating him from the scene to snuff out each of them in isolation, one-by-one (e.g., Tucker Max's inevitable retreat to psychotherapy). This phenomenon was unintentionally brought up by Rollo last week, in his derision of the film "Shame" as one more side effect of feminist conspiracy:
http://rationalmale.wordpress.com/2012/07/27/pathologizing-the-male-sexual-response/
Aging PUAs like Rollo have to provide late-stage guidance for his "upperclassmen" students, leading them or (inspiring them to lead themselves) out of the one-dimensional cunt-conquest and pointing them toward lives in full. They do this in fits and starts, but with no conscious purpose driving the project. If you read between the lines at Roissy's site (as Vox does above), the proud PUA is entering his own stage of ennui. He can't publicly admit it because to do so risks invalidating a reputation built on brash, twentysomething boasts of PUZZAY4LIFE. But someone has to step up. Or else the most successful students will have little understanding how to apply their very real skills to goals of lasting magnitude.
As presently constituted, Game 1.0 is like staying in college forever. The mission of this website as I understand it is to broaden the pussyhunt to greater social vistas, a kind of grad school to fashion alphas into lives of independence, not just from women/feminism but from any overweening social influence. After all, independence is the mark of the alpha more than beaver-collecting, which is better understood as one of the better rewards consequent to that independence. "Gaming" today's modern slut into a score is not just an unworthily narrow raison d'être for masculine power, it is an unsustainable plan for life, and often a destructive one.
Matt
Fantastic, very interesting. The video reminded me of a hilarious semi precious weapons video, 'her hair is on fire'.
Back to the doom factor. All too true for how I believe in the cruelest things in life are age, sickness and death.
The gesture is apparently not exclusively British, as I knew too in grade school that two fingers with back of the hand outwards means F.U. and inwards is the victory sign.
First, Lost Prophets are one of my all-time favorite bands, dating back to the awesome Fake Sound of Progress, which has been a mainstay on my workout playlist for years now. And, you almost never hear people talking about them stateside, even though they're brilliant. Anyway.
I think there comes a point in life where we want an actual real connection with another person who loves us, where we can be vulnerable and safe and cherished.
I have always wondered if game v.1 was actually a means to attaining that, or if the methodology actually leads to greater ennui on the part of the player feeding the cynical impression that there aren't any women out there who can't be gamed. Hard to form a lasting connection, I would think, when you see the world through that paradigm.
Perhaps Pepe le Pew is happier than Roissy, after all.
There's plenty of other fish in the ocean.
Personally I prefer girls. *le sigh*
Call it a weakness.
Dalrock has wisdom. He has my respect.
Vox,
This was an especially sapient post. I’m not much for the game posts, since I gave up the random parade of poon upon marriage, imagine my surprise to find this when I stopped in for a hedonistic quickie. Thanks.
Our oldest son dropped the hot asian girl for the sweet girl. It will probably work out best.
I never really liked Roosh or Roissy. Reading their forums would reveal the current state of the American Male...insecure...frightened...
Both give off an immoral view. I think they lie 80 percent of the time. The best model has always been the Christian model of the man being the head of the household. Wives should submit to their husbands as their husbands submit to God. The man has the responsibility of leading the family by leadership. Betas flee from this...and remember Nice Guys never shake the Earth. God calls you to never submit to the evils of this world.
Feminism will die on its own, not just the movement but its members too by diabetes and heart attacks due to being overweight, as well as being eaten by their cats in their apartments when they die of loneliness.
Yep. Gotta love the cats jokes.
Funny how close this song is to "living la vida loca"
"saaveee youur syymmpaathyyy" "living la vida locaaa"
Good song and video and true nonetheless.
Kinda sorta whores that expect several thousand dollars in favors per f*** aren't really that great?
Who knew.
More expense, less bang, but heh, at least she isn't pro!
I got the feeling Rollo didn't watch the movie 'Shame' before criticizing it. It's really more than a movie about sex addiction, and to use it to illustrate the struggle between the sexes really perverts a truly astounding movie.
Maybe, but you wont see a movie called shame about a girl-slut any time soon, so the point stands.
Momma popping out kids gets Saints status. Femenists weep. Having two alpha boys at home who eat everything and are pigs. They can be a pain in the ass and your car insurance go's through the roof. But I love them. Little sister is well protected.
Just saying. The girl that chooses her best option at her peak value. Probably wins.
F*cking-a. Yeah, Steven McQueen makes a totally gamma movie - that's very likely.
Besides, the sister was even more screwed up than the brother.
I can see how on paper the plot might sound like "man saved from himself by a heroic woman". But really, it is that for the first time in his life he is forced to face the reality that someone needs him as the stronger party in a human relationship, and he is failing at it.
And since the name is Shame, if it were made by a woman or a gamma man we would expect the point to be made by feminine internal dialogue like "oh, I'm so ashamed of myself! How could I? Can she ever forgive me?"
But no. He just snaps and goes berserk. That's really our only cue. And THAT is a genuine male response to shame as it becomes unbearable.
From Perfecting the Fantasy:
https://rationalmale.wordpress.com/2011/10/31/perfecting-the-fantasy/
Here’s a secret – there’s no such thing as contentment.
Being content implies that life is static; it’s not, and to be honest, how boring would that be anyway? Life consists of varying states of discontent: why else would you bother doing anything? But the good news is that it’s more fun and more beneficial to manage discontent than to endure contentment (which you can’t anyway since it’s transitory at best). The trick is to understand that there are 2 kinds of discontent - creative and destructive discontent. What you choose to do with that discontent makes all the difference in the world. You will only get what you’ve gotten if you keep doing what you’ve done. Don’t allow yourself to fall back into old destructive habits of dealing with discontent. Don’t bother with anti-depressants and self-help books when a good hard workout at the gym would serve you better.
The truth is I’m always discontent, but constructively so. The minute you can look yourself in the mirror and be happy with what you see you’re sunk. You can always improve, even after achieving things that were once very important and difficult to attain. Happiness is a state of being, it’s in the ‘doing’ not the ‘having done.’ It’s not about endlessly chasing your tail, it’s about being better than you were the day before.
the pua/game lifestyle, is littered with people who immerse themselves in for a couple of years then move on. Learn about how to be a better man for a while, then discover bigger and better things. Personally, I think it's a good sign.
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