Crazy Fuel

Thus Spake Omega:
There is something deeply pleasant about hitting rocks with a bat. The swing, the force, the crack, the rock spinning fast enough to hum, it all makes for a very satisfying, very boyish past-time. For whatever reason, carrying a bat around always made me feel a bit more powerful. I think that I instinctively knew that as fun as hitting things was, the bat was a weapon and if I needed to I could defend myself with it. Men are hard wired to be attracted to weapons. It does not matter if the weapon is a Nimitz class aircraft carrier, an M1911 (.45 of course), or a high quality stick, we love weapons. Somehow, we know that we are meant to take up arms in defense of our families, lives, and homes. We are meant to be aggressive. Yet for some, as a boy grows up, that drive, that fascination with violence, for various reasons, is excised like a cancer. For others it is never trained and becomes uncontrollable and destructive. Either way, a boy who does not know how to channel and use his aggression is not a man. Of the two fates, mine was the former.

Due to a deep depression that settled on me in my mid teens, I never learned how to use my aggression. I definitely had it, and frequently used it in school and on my cousins, but as I moved into my teens a growing sense of fear and anxiety began to push back on it. It always got me into trouble, and despite my father's insistence that I use it to defend myself, I received no training on when and how much. There were other far more severe factors that I will not mention here (suffice it to say if I had had male training it may have saved me from losing my mind), and all of it combined drove me deeper into depression. By the time I hit my twenties I was crazy. The aggression had turned inwards with no outlet. I felt helpless and I began to consider suicide. Eventually after years of depression I sought help.

So, as I approach the end of my twenties, it is no small thing when I say that I have not been depressed at all this year. There have been some bad days, but even those are better than my best days were during depression. Best of all I only occasionally think about testing the integrity of my skull with a high velocity lead slug (.45 of course). However, this is not my personal therapy journal, but a post about game, so let me explain why I am no longer depressed, and what changed.

I have spent a lot of time (and a shit-load of money) in therapy. While I do not recommend it for most people, for the genuinely crazy it may do some good. Paying someone to care is not a bad way to go if nothing else has worked. But despite learning to control my emotions, the one thing that turned everything around was aggression. If you are a guy you will have it in abundance. While there is merit in learning to calm yourself, you must learn to channel your aggression. It has to go somewhere. If you do not it will cause problems. I had a triple whammy: I could not control it, which terrified me; the terror fueled a need to bottle it up; and so I channeled it inwards (which turned to visions of sugar plums dancing in my head: .45 of course). After years of trying to understand what was going on in the course of a few week I had an epiphany and I began to channel it outwards. It was relief like nothing I had ever felt.

After the initial awkward steps, once as I got used to the idea, I found that, to stay sane, I had to have an outlet. I had to have a place to channel the aggression; I had to have a target. I was unfamiliar enough with this new need that the most obvious outlet did not occur to me. Aggression though is a fairly simple impulse and martial arts quickly came to mind as the clearest choice. I joined a local Muay Thai gym and working out there is very calming. Punching things rivals hypnosis in its therapeutic value (way cheaper too). When I go there I pour myself into the exercise. I have to. I take all the anger, fear, frustration, sex drive, and depression, and I grind it up and use it as fuel, and unexpectedly it turns into a sort of exhausted, jagged joy. I limp home feeling better than I have ever felt in my life. Aggression is medicine for men. Learning to channel it is a necessary daily practice.

The benefits are many and varied. As long as I do not let the aggression build up, it improves my focus, determination, and willpower. I can approach girls fearlessly. Before, approach anxiety felt like walking through tar, now it feels like a light breeze pushing me back. I went on a date recently and just for kicks, I decided I was not interested, walked away, and did not look back. This was a major turning point. I have always been afraid of breaking the rules, regardless of the rules' source, and I decided that I was not going to be afraid of it anymore, so I walked away. I had no reason, or justification, I simply refused to be afraid of losing. Now I talk to random strangers on the street, almost more than people I know. My game has a long way to go, but feeling no fear while conversing with an 8 and her 8.5 sister seems to me to be a good sign. My voice is louder. Tomorrow I will have my second date with a girl I approached on the street. She is a 7 and seems to be into me. Things are really looking up.

Learning controlled aggression has changed everything for me. I feel as though I am carrying a bat at all times. I can use it to nudge people and get their attention. I can swing it to warn people away. And, my favorite, I can take it to side of someone's head, should they deserve it. Knowing that I can hit back has been extremely therapeutic. Who would have thought that acting like a man would be the cure for not feeling like a man?

The sex appeal of IQ

Roissy considers it:

You’ve got two schools of thought. The first insists that smarts, like any other positive attribute, can only raise a man’s dating market value because women are hypergamous and appreciate a smarter man than themselves. The other school says that women are put off by men who are too much smarter than themselves, and that experience shows women fall for lunkhead jerks all the time, perhaps because these types of men are less introspective and more unthinkingly assertive about hitting on women.

The science I’ve read on this subject has been all over the place, but the consensus seems to be that having some smarts is a net plus to a man’s desirability.

Where do I come down on this perennial issue? I stick by the Dating Market Value Test for Men at the top of this blog. A better-than-average IQ is beneficial, but the benefits to picking up women begin to dissipate past a certain degree of brainpower, because very high IQ seems to be associated with a lack of social savviness and other off-putting personality quirks.

I agree with Roissy to a point. My perspective is that intelligence is a major plus in two circumstances. First, it is a huge DHV when dealing with women who place value on intelligence. These tend to be educated women in the 1 SD+ category; it's easy to spot them because they will mention a) their academic credentials, or b) how smart they are, within the first five minutes of meeting someone new. There is nothing that turns them on faster than being corrected or seeing a man intellectually humiliate someone. Second, it can be a very useful tool for both social and sexual dominance.

That being said, one should never confuse the tool for the consequence of its use and that is the problem that most smart guys face. Most smart men think that displaying their intelligence, usually in some hopelessly dorky manner, will make them more attractive to women. This is not the case. Whereas women are attracted to muscles and strong bodies for their own sake, and not merely because they can indicate social and sexual dominance, the first group aside, they are not attracted to intelligence for its own sake, only when it is used to dominate others.

For example, if the science geek takes an arrogant attitude and openly disrespects less intelligent men as barely evolved chimpanzees, women will be attracted to him. Of course, he has to be able to back it up and few science geeks can. That's why men who are balanced, who honor the Greek ideal of developing mind, body, and soul, will tend to clean up with women, because there are few things that women find more attractive than a man who can dominate them and others both physically and mentally. However, mental dominance isn't as readily apparent as physical dominance, which is why this takes us back to the "chicks dig jerks" theme. A smart asshole doesn't hesitate to exert his mental dominance, whereas the average smart nice guy will do everything in his power to refrain from demonstrating it in any way. Needless to say, women will be attracted to the former, not the latter. Think of the "apples" scene in Good Will Hunting. That is a clear demonstration of mental dominance driving attraction; it may not be as much of a turn-on as a physical beat-down, but make no mistake, it's a beat-down and it's going to turn on most woman who witness it, especially if they happen to have any brains of their own.

It's not that women are any more interested in football games and motorcycles than physics and philosophy, it's just that they usually can't understand the latter.

Reversing the social thermostat

One of the things that separates men from women, and ALPHA from BETA, is the ability to control one's emotions and reactions. Roissy memorably linked the ALPHA ideal to a rock that lets the ocean waves crash over it with complete indifference; when the waters calm, the rock is still there, exactly as it was before.

Since supplicants and subordinates are always hypersensitive to the feelings of their superiors, a lack of sensitivity is always interpreted as dominance by men and women alike. In practical terms, this means a lack of reaction to what other people are saying. The more emotionally intense the stimulus, the more important it is to remain calm and impassive. Now, some people come by this naturally. For whatever reason, in a highly charged situation like an emergency or a competitive sporting event, I tend to feel almost as if I go out of my body and I remain much more calm than I would if the situation was an everyday one. Because that has tended to work out well for me, I try to simulate the feeling when it doesn't come naturally.

The way this can be achieved is simply by delaying your instinctive reaction. When your boss yells at you or your girlfriend accuses you of something, don't say anything, don't even allow your face to change expression. Just meet their eyes, breath slowly, and blink deliberately. Then ask them to repeat themselves. Nine times out of ten, they will immediately lower their voice and address you in a calmer, more civilized manner. This is an instinctively submissive response to dominant behavior. If they're completely out of emotional control, though, they will start shrieking and become much more difficult to understand, in which case, you continue to remain calm, explain that you can't understand what they're trying to tell you, and ask them to repeat themselves again in a more civilized manner. Sometimes they will, although they will often storm out instead. The useful thing about the latter is that you can then return to what you were doing before, since you haven't even acknowledged their demand or complaint, let alone agreed to do anything about it.

Granted, it may take a degree of natural narcissism to easily resist the male urge to respond in the face of a perceived problem. But the urge can be resisted, even by the most instinctively submissive Gamma. Remember the wise words of Calvin Coolidge: "Never go out to meet trouble. If you will just sit still, nine cases out of ten someone will intercept it before it reaches you."

But dominant self-control isn't only useful in conflict situations, it's also usefully applicable to situations where a woman is attempting to get a rise out of you, either through sexual provocation or a shit test. Do exactly the same thing. Don't react, breathe, blink, ask for her to repeat herself. You'll find that you can make a woman who is striking a provocative pose to blush and stammer simply by not reacting and calmly asking her to repeat herself once or twice. Of course, because you've gone from played to player, and because women are naturally attracted to both social and sexual dominance, this will tend to create attraction even where none initially existed.

Keep in mind that the point is not to be a robot. You can smile if you like, although this is best reserved for the sexual situations and can cause problems in the conflict situations. You can - in fact, you should - speak in normal tones. And you should react normally in non-hostile situations; acting like you're partially autistic isn't going to get you anywhere. The idea is simply that the hotter it gets outside, the icier you become inside.

Dogsquat's new blog

On the taking of the Red Pill:

You sit there reading some dude’s blog, eyes picking over bullet points and flowcharts and PowerPoints. What the fuck is the matter with people who think like this? None of it sits right with you. In the comments, some douchebag with a low, sloping forehead tosses out a tip/brags to other douchebags. You’re skeptical. No woman is that dumb. Maybe he was at a supprt group for people who used to eat paint chips. Sigh. You scroll through some of his other comments Now you’re disgusted. That dude lacks a shred of decency. He’s got no respect for anyone. Pathological. You’re offended on behalf of women everywhere. Fuck this. Might as well get some sleep.

But some small part of you wonders…

You try out that douchebag’s bullshit one day, on a whim…and something happened! She didn’t drop to her knees and blow you, but you’ve never made a woman smile and bite her lip like that. Shock! The Earth shifts under your feet. Blurry mysteries snap into crisp focus. You hunt down that old post and scroll through the comments until you find the comment. You stare at the username. You imagine that person’s life. You feel slightly apologetic. You’re appreciative. That anonymous person has given you a great gift.

That’s it, the Event Horizon. Ground Zero. It’s never the same afterwords.

This promises to be a pretty good blog, as he's been one of the better commenters at Susan's place and other blogs. Now, I never took the Red Pill because, for the most part, I was the douchebag from whom my male friends and acquaintances gradually came to their awakenings, to the extent that they have done so. Of course, I had my own role models, most notoriously a pair of brothers who owned a night club and a bar downtown, and whose arrogance and total disrespect for the female sex really had to be seen to be believed. It was like beholding a major work of art seeing either of them in operation. Needless to say, they were more successful and more popular with women than anyone else in town, including the rock stars and the professional athletes. I saw the younger brother, in particular, effortlessly pick up women that neither Prince nor Mike Modano, both notorious womanizers in their own rights, could score.

Now, few who read this blog need to be convinced of the core truth of the matter, but that still leaves 99 percent of the men and 99.9 percent of the women in the dark. So, it will be a long time indeed until the Game blogs become unnecessary, especially because every spring, the high schools of America are graduating young men steeped in 12 years of female propaganda.

Alpha Mail: dealing with the other guy

DS asks about dealing with the competition:

I was trying to find an older post, but none of my search phrases netted what I was looking for. I was recently out with a girl and she mentioned "this guy she's dating," and none of the things were very positive. I remember a post that talked about how to handle situations like that, if I should talk bad about the guy or encourage a break up. I couldn't remember what the course of attack should be, so I tried to remain neutral. Any tips on where that post might be found, or maybe just a brief refresher?

No clue about the post, but my recommendation, assuming that her involvement with the other guy isn't a dealbreaker at this stage, is to simply ignore his existence and make it clear that you have zero interest in discussing him or anyone else interested in her. This is where Deltas and Gammas tend to make their mistake and either a) leap at the chance to sing, dance, and look like the Potentially Better Boyfriend, or b) leap into the Friend Zone by providing a shoulder upon which she can cry. If she brings the other guy up again after the first time, simply raise your eyebrows and say something like "I had no idea you were still hitting that... interesting."

That should produce some hurried denials or justifications, which will provide DS with good information concerning whether he should be bothering with her at all. It sounds to me as if she's been relegated to a horse in the other guy's stable or otherwise demoted, which is why she's simultaneously bad-mouthing him and continuing to see him. DS has to realize that he may be of lower rank than the other guy, which means he has to up her perception of his rank or she's going to prefer part-time other guy to full-time him.

If she tries to bring him up a third time, DS should simply cut contact with her. No warning, no explanation, no drama, and when she comes around looking for attention, he should tell her that he's got better options than wasting time on a flake hung up on someone else. Remember, women are attracted to male action. Cutting off contact with her may be the message she needs to drop the guy. And if not, at least he won't be wasting any more time on her.

Observations in the wild

Spacebunny and I were out at dinner last night, a few tables over from one where four couples were sitting. They were just a little bit obnoxious; Spacebunny admonished me for raising my glass in a sardonic manner when one gentleman was toasting something so loudly that it seemed as if he expected everyone in the restaurant to be involved. The interesting thing was that the guy who was toasting was shorter and balder than his friends, slightly overweight, wearing glasses, and was probably the least attractive man at the table. He was also the most outgoing and extroverted by far, as when the table full of young women on a bachelorette party were raising their glasses to the bride-to-be, he rather loudly called out to them and then got his entire table to join them in saluting the young woman.

The four women at the table were a mixed bag, only one was even remotely attractive. She wasn't what I'd call pretty, but she was tall, slender, and stylish, and stood out from her three friends who were short and conventionally round hausfraus. We had no idea which woman was with which man, but needless to say, it didn't surprise me in the slightest when, as the four men were going outside for cigarettes, the loud, balding guy with glasses leaned over and kissed his wife, the tall woman, before joining his three friends.

The lesson? As Roissy has pointed out, women may not necessarily like men who are asses, but they are attracted to them. As is the case in many other aspects of life, who dares wins.

Stay away from the ex-girlfriend

This is, granted, an extreme example. But it's an illustration of why it is always a terrible idea to remain in contact with one's ex-girlfriends and ex-wives when one isn't required to do so.

Anna Mackowiak, 34, is facing jail after taking her revenge on 45-year-old Marek Olszewski when he turned up at her surgery with toothache just days after breaking up with her. She gave him a heavy dose of anaesthetic and plucked his teeth out. She then wrapped his head and jaw in a bandage to stop him opening his mouth and said there had been complications and he would need to see a specialist.

The woman is clearly both a quasi-psychopath and a criminal, but the ex-boyfriend was a complete idiot to have gone to his ex-girlfriend when he needed a dentist. This is a classic Gamma move, failing to understand that men and women are different and assuming that a woman will behave like he himself would in a similar situation.