Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Alpha Mail: why are the geek fallacies wrong?

Some Dude is attempting to grok his gammatude in order to surmount it:
Being a geek/rabbit who would like to escape his nightmare, I saw that every single fallacy you wrote is something I believe in. In all truthfulness, I simply don't understand why they are false.

I believe you that they are false, because I can look at outcomes, what I feel is one thing, but how does it relate to the result?

So my question: could someone elaborate a little on WHY those are fallacies?
This is a fair challenge.  Let's look at each of the five fallacies. And keep in mind as we do that although I agree they are fallacies, this is not my list.

1. Ostracizers Are Evil

It is impossible to have a functioning group without an ostracism function. In Japan, they have a saying: "the nail that sticks up gets hammered down". Unless the group has the ability to ostracize, it has no ability to perform its primary role and establish its identity.  Now, this does not mean that ostracism is intrinsically good, only that it is a necessary tool and can be used for either good or evil.  Ostracizers, therefore, can themselves be good or evil. The irony, of course, is that no group ostracizes more instinctively or vehemently than low-SS geek groups of the sort we see at Whatever and in the present SFWA.

2. Friends Accept Me As I Am

Friends care about you and have your best interests in mind. This can be, but is not necessarily, synonymous with accepting you as you are. Also, since humans are dynamic beings, what you are changes over time and not necessarily in a good way. A true friend will not simply accept your incipient descent into depravity and depression because that is who you are, he will attempt to arrest it. Accepting you as you are is an excuse for inaction and indicative of indifference, not friendship. And substantive and legitimate criticism is one of the greatest gifts a friend can give you; who else cares enough to be honest with you?

3. Friendship Before All

Friendship is important. But friendships are transient, as they are heavily dependent upon time, place, interests, and maturity level. I was all but inseparable from several friends in high school and college, but I haven't had contact with them in literally decades. To put friendship before all is to remain in a state of developmental retardation. There is a season for everything, and friendships need to be allowed to go through their birth-death cycle just like everything else.

4. Friendship Is Transitive

It's not.  It's that simple. In high school, I had my jock friends and my geek friends... and none of them even met most of the girls I was dating. In college, I had my freshman year friends, my best friend, my independent friends, my Greek friends, my teammates, and my roommates.  There wasn't a whole lot of overlap between the groups. After college, there was the night club scene, the band, the dojo, and the workout crew.  Again, some overlap, but not a great deal.  Some of my friends liked each other, others might as well have been aliens from different planets speaking different languages as far as they were concerned.  If a pair of friends get along, great.  If not, it's no big deal.  So long as everyone is civil, it's fine.

5. Friends Do Everything Together

To the Sigma, this doesn't sound ridiculous, this sounds "we had better lock you up so you don't kill yourself trying to lick the lawnmower blade" insane.  Everyone needs their space. Everyone has divergent interests. Everyone will be close to different people at different times in their lives. The idea that friends must do everything together is fundamentally indicative of fairly severe social immaturity and a complete lack of observation.

24 comments:

Josh said...

Fundamentally, all five of these are rooted in the geek's fear that his friends will all leave him and he'll be all alone forever.

tz said...

Ostracizers are only evil if they say something against the group, you RSHD! or is it RHSD? RHSDs are evil even when they don't ostracize. That is why there is no Gamma Ostrich.

Like "Romantic Love" in Dalrock's most recent post which is not recognizable as any form of Love (CS Lewis listed four), "Friendship" in this context has no relationship to what in the biblical Greek is called Philea.

Given the rules, "Membership" would be a better word. It is transitive, Wiscon and NARAL and Obama2012 would not be disjoint sets. As long as you are a member and don't break those rules, say or do anything else and no other member will even notice or care. You can do something involving the mutual exchange of bodily fluids with 100 others but don't light up even one cigarette.

Think of it as a giant network of interconnected rabbit warrens, in this case on the left.

There is a parallel one of the right and a smaller one yet for libertarians.

I don't quite understand how the rules apply to women except in the membership model. This shallow gregariousness makes the herd bigger so the predators might take out the betas/gammas just out of chance. Actual defense would require an Alpha or Sigma, but neither are going to be part of one big amorphous herd.

Old Harry said...

It all sounds very immature on an OMG BFFs level. I hope "Some dude" will stick around and grow out of gamma mode. Hang in there dude, the red pill will dislodge and start to dissolve.
Alpha Game - slaying gamma rabbits for over a fiftieth of a century.

Cail Corishev said...

The people I know who have one single group of friends that does everything together always strike me as if they never left high school.

Josh said...

The people I know who have one single group of friends that does everything together always strike me as if they never left high school.

Generally, neither women nor gammas mature beyond high school.

Retrenched said...

"Fundamentally, all five of these are rooted in the geek's fear that his friends will all leave him and he'll be all alone forever."

Similar to the BETA's fear that if his current GF leaves him he'll never be able to find another woman.

Josh said...

Similar to the BETA's fear that if his current GF leaves him he'll never be able to find another woman.

Exactly. And this fear is rooted in the girl's/gamma's/BETA's hatred of themselves. They look in the mirror and hate the person that they see, and are terrified that if that person is revealed to everyone else, everyone will hate that person too.

Old Harry said...

" Similar to the BETA's fear that if his current GF leaves him he'll never be able to find another woman."

After college and way before the red pill, I realized that there would always be other women available. During high school and into my third year in college, I had oneitis regarding whichever girl I was with. I grew out of it.
Now, I love my wife and really don't want anyone else, but I know that if something ever happened, there would be others.

Peter Garstig said...

Love your neighbor as yourself.

'Yourself' is important in that sentence. If there's no love towards yourself, there's not love towards anything. Only perverted adoration....which is hate disguised.

The left movement is motivated by self hatred.

Jack Amok said...

Note that points 1-5 all amount to Serve the Warren and the Warren Will Serve You.

It assumes membership in the group is the single most defining characteristic of a person. If you're in, you're in, and should be indistinguishable from anyone else who's in.

The only thing more pathetic than a grown man who goes "squee" is a grown man who goes "squee" over belonging to that sort of a group.

Orion said...

In High School I had some friends who out right loathed each other. My best men from my wedding party didn't mix well and as a group would be unlikely to ever associate together. Friends often to relate to different facets of our personality and life. Having only one set of friends seems a bit... one dimensional. If you want to stop being one-dimensional you need to diversify your interests.

Anonymous said...

Excellent series.

John Williams said...

Friends Do Everything Together
That's the clingy girl justifying her insecurities.

Stickwick said...

And this fear is rooted in the girl's/gamma's/BETA's hatred of themselves. They look in the mirror and hate the person that they see, and are terrified that if that person is revealed to everyone else, everyone will hate that person too.

I don't think this is broadly applicable to women. Women are largely fear-driven on a biological level, which is why men are the leaders. For one thing, we're physically more vulnerable than men. But women also seem to be wired for the social/group dynamic more than men, and therefore being cut off from a person or a group is painful. Certainly there are women who loathe themselves, but generally speaking the fear is biologically intrinsic and not rooted in self-hatred.

IntrovertSuccess said...

Number 5 seems to apply to a large amount of people, whether gamma, delta, beta or alpha.

When I travel I do it on my own, sometimes for months at a time. 99% think I'm crazy for to do it like that.

kh123 said...

"...friendships need to be allowed to go through their birth-death cycle just like everything else."

Strange how one can know this instinctively since a kid, but still have a switch clicked upon reading something like the above.

Truth be told, it's a bit of a thorn. But, that's probably either nostalgia or regret of some sort kicking in. There's a logic to it, the grand scheme of the cycle you describe; the fairweathervane.

tz said...

Love your neighbor as yourself is not about masturbation.

Beware of Geeks being categorized into Greeks.

I have no problem serving the warren, but I'm into low-carb, and there are people who appreciate chinchilla or other hare shirts. As far as the warren serving me, Gnawwww...

whatever said...

Friends do not always have your best interest at heart and their advice is often self-serving or simply said because that's what they are supposed to say.

I mean really.

Mudz said...

I can't even express how much I detest number 2.

I have a girl buddy who once expressed the sentiment, which I'll paraphrase, since it's from memory:

'I watch porn, gave german strangers blowjobs and am anxious to break down all my sexual restraints. The idea that my parents could disapprove of this and not accept me as I am, bothers me, to be honest.'

Hilarious and sad at the same time.

@ Whatever

I doubt that your description accurately fits the profile of a friend. Those are simply attaches to a social circle.

Unknown said...

"But friendships are transient, as they are heavily dependent upon time, place, interests, and maturity level"

What is interesting about this statement is that in the setting of someone who cannot let go of supposed friendships they cannot mature. Thus immaturity precludes maturity unless circumstances intervene strongly enough.

Jonny said...

Awesome.
WheelsHappy.org

Papapete said...

I believe that the longing for permanence in friendship is rooted in the longing for the eternal when friendship (like all other things) is no longer subject to death and decay.

Papapete said...

I believe that the longing for permanence in friendship is rooted in the longing for the eternal when friendship (like all other things) is no longer subject to death and decay.

Ron said...

Thanks, that actually does explain a few things that I found pretty frustrating.

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