I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while as there are an increasing number of threads here that discuss one or other rather extreme and categorical ‘rule’ or ‘concept’ and inevitably some of the more advanced guys start to question the validity of these guidelines.


In this crazy community of ours there are a lot of strongly stated concepts and ideas floated around. From outer game advice, e.g. Never buy girls drinks or Hide your interest, to inner game advice, e.g. The ego must die or Do not give a fuck what anyone thinks of you. The advice is rarely given caveats and instead is stated as a set of categorical imperatives.

As you go on through your journey you come to realise that there are no hard and fast rules. Buying girls drinks is fine, if you are solid in yourself and are doing it for reasons other than to buy their time and attention. It is quite alright even a good thing to show stacks of interest, if it is not coming from a place of neediness. The ego cannot be completely destroyed and has its uses. You need to be aware of other peoples opinions of you and contextually moderate your behaviour, otherwise you risk becoming a sociopath.

So what is going on?

Newbies
The majority of noobs are clueless and misguided social misfits. No offence to any noobs reading this. It is to be expected as people need to reach breaking point before they make a firm resolve to take action to fix their issues. For some their breaking point happens before the imbalance is too far from the mean, but for most they are heavily weighed down on the side of deficiency before this occurs. As a result much of the advice is tailored to people with severe social deficiencies.

Aristotle
To use an analogy from Aristotelian virtue ethics, we each occupy a position on a scale of all the qualities relative to being a socially awesome attractive man. On one end of the scale is deficiency on the other excess. Both are bad. The aim is to achieve a balance between the two. Aristotle talks of courage. Courage is the quality embodied in the actions of those with equilibrium of confidence and fear. Too much fear, or too little confidence, results in cowardice. Too little fear, or too much confidence, results in rash action and foolish choices.

As most of the guys who join the community are in a state of chronic deficiency, in order to achieve equilibrium a mass rebalancing is required. This is where the strongly stated, extreme, categorical imperatives come in.

Application
I’ll illustrate this with the simple example of vocal projection. If you are working with a guy who speaks really timidly, on a -10 to +10 scale this guy is on a -10 (+10 being Brian Blessed). For communicating in a noisy club or bar he probably needs to get to at least a +3 (Aristotle argues, and I would agree, that the perfect position on each scale is context relevant). So we need to give this guy some advice that will cause a +13 swing on his scale. So maybe we tell him to shout.

This is the same with telling guys not to give a fuck what anyone thinks of you. The average noob is probably deeply affected by people’s opinions of him; concerned to the level of becoming frozen with fear at the thought of putting himself in the vulnerable position of giving a girl the power to judge him by acceptance or rejection. He is a -10 on a scale of internal to external locus of control. For these situations maybe we want to get him to a +5, a swing of 15. So the advice given, just like the perfect position is context relevant.

If someone is training an individual personally obviously they can tailor their advice to that individual in order to create the correct amount of swing to put them in the perfect position on the scale. Where the advice is going out to a general audience, as on a forum or even more so in a DVD set or book, it needs to be tailored to match the needs of the majority of the target audience. In PU the majority of the target audience is in a badly deficient position and they need extreme advice and categorical imperatives to swing them into the right position.

This is true of nearly every prevalent concept that is discussed in this crazy community of ours.

Conclusion
Therefore, what you really need to be aiming towards is a virtuous, context relevant, balance between excess and deficiency in every characteristic. For guys who are still in a state of deficiency push beyond what you think balance looks like and towards what you think is the extreme excess end of the scale, because your perspective is currently skewed to the deficient end of the scale. Then, as you start to get results, discard these categorical imperatives in favour of a moderated target position on each scale and start to calibrate to each situation.


Peace,

kowalski