How do you feel about ethics and morals in life in general, not just PUA?

What are your own standards you live to...

Did you go through any particular journey or discovery to realise these ethics?

I try to live by black and white morals and ethics, I can't claim to do this 100% of the time because we all have lapses of stupidity that makes us do or say stupid shit from time to time, or emotional frustrations that make us lash out. The vast majority of the time I control this but maybe once a year or so I'll snap.

The thing that started off my moral change was a slow but steady realisation of hypocrisy in the industry and colleagues around me. I was quite a heavy liar and user of the most unethical principles out there. I started toying with some new ideas involving passionately feigning ethics and morals, the loyalty this inspired in others, the trust, the number of people that flocked to me, this all made me realise just how powerful being an ethical and moral guy was. When combined with the realisation that everyone around me was being absolutely hypocritical and that they weren't really being "alpha" at all, the big realisation was that while these guys were no longer seeking validation from women they were seeking it from their colleagues and men around them more than ever.

The side effect of starting down that path was that I also gained a huge amount of empathy for those around me in the end. My morals and ethics started out negatively but now stem from the absolute belief in right over wrong, though I don't claim to ALWAYS know what is right over wrong or always get things right. When I do get it wrong I will put it right again though.

I just think to myself, what if this was being done to me?

Or how would I want to be treated in this situation if I have to be the big bad wolf?

great post RLA that's some good stuff their. I can definitely understand the whole validation thing cos they wanna be seen as massive pimps.

Yeah, which is fair play in relation to business. I will qualify myself to anyone that calls me out if there is any danger of it affecting the opinion potential clients might have of me, I wouldn't want to lose business.

I will not however qualify myself to anyone under any circumstances that are simply personal. There's a shit tonne of "I'm better than you" personal competition and vendettas between all the major people in the industry, to the point of being called out on $5000 bets for sarging competitions and the like. It's just plain ridiculous ego massaging.

That and the internal circlejerking that goes on under the pretense of learning when the reality was they just wanted pats on the back for being successful. One of the biggest hypocrisies is the HB rating scale which is entirely unnecessary and just plain ridiculous, in fact the looks of a person are completely irrelevant to any report at all other than "hurr hurr I pulled a hottie give me validation guys!"

When I called people out on it I got a great deal of flak for not agreeing with the mantra and the argument was always that of it being relative to confidence, which is utter bollocks as there are plenty of absolute stunners out there with extremely low self esteems.

I fell into the industry a reject teenage mess of magnitudes, became a complete dick, did a whole tonne of shit I'm not proud of at all and then went through the above changes that I'm very glad happened. Sure, I make absolutely no money now and have a small mountain of debt but at least I'm not hurting anyone now. I couldn't have continued where I was and keep the morals and ethics that I had developed.

You know I've not really codified my own system of ethics. I've crossed lines I shouldn't have and learned from it, I've failed to cross other lines I should have and learned from that too. A lot of it is surely subject to identity, experience and societal influence.

Me thinks this thread would benefit from a Kowalski contribution.

PS

Categorical imperative.

Posting "categorical imperative" is like flashing the bat-signal to me.

A little background...

Pretty much Aristotle seems to have got it best of the big names. Funnily this is one of the only areas of philosophy where they tend to tell the history of the big names in reverse order as they seem to improve in reverse.

Mill's utilitarianism is just awful. The greatest good for the greatest number, ignores the individual and is impossible to calculate (among other fatal flaws).

Kant's categorical imperatives look pretty silly when pushed to their logical limits. Would Kant really tell the truth about the location of his mum to a crazed axe murder complete with blood soaked axe? His philosophy says he would as he would be guilt free in his honesty. Principles are nice ... in principle.

Aristotle's polis is all about being involved in society and having balance in all things and harmony with your society. It is something that is learned through shared stories, observations and experiences.


Peace,

kowalski

I'm likely oversimplifying but what if the society itself is doing something "wrong", or based on this position, that another society deems 'wrong", like German citizens going along with the Nazi's for example? Surely that individual can't be considered "right" for being in harmony with it? Cheap overused example with the Nazi bit I realise.

PS

Personally:

I was good when I was little because I was scared of eternal damnation in the fiery pits of hell. I really believed so I really behaved. I laugh at people who say they believe and then still break the rules, they don't believe. I know because I did and you don't break the rules if you really believe.

After I broke from the religion I had been indoctrinated with (at about 9 or 10) I continued being honest as I realised it was powerful. Being recklessly honest (disclosure), especially about big things (which maybe you knew you couldn't get away with anyway), means that people will believe you when you do choose to lie. Being recklessly honest means that people can not successfully ridicule you as you own yourself, "You like My Little Pony", "Yes, I do.", "Oh ... OK ... let's go ridicule the kid who cares". Stuff like that. It is powerful in many ways. I was comfortable with being brazenly honest, I was OK with me from early on.

I've not done very much that I wasn't proud of at the time and only very little that I was ashamed of at the time. I am pretty ashamed of some of the stuff I did in the past and I'm sure in the future I'll be pretty ashamed of some of the stuff I'm doing now. I'll still get why I did it then though and won't want not to have done those things as and when they actually happened (unless maybe I fuck something up big one day).

For many years I used honest disclosure as a weapon and a shield.


Then as I matured the journey has been more about honesty and disclosure and its relation to morals than morals directly. My belief in, and commitment to, honesty is actually founded in linguistic philosophy.

I think of lying as a direct assault on society. Liars are the enemy of society and even the self as everything that is you is inter-subjective and inter-subjectivity requires co-operation and a principle of 'holding true' in relation to one's linguistic expressions.

That is a scruffy explanation. If you can read some Donald Davidson on Radical Interpretation (Donald Davidson (philosopher) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) it explains a lot of how I think on this, he was a pleasure to find as he helped me fill out my ideas but I was also gutted as I was pretty sure I was onto something original before I discovered his work.


But I'm not as stupid as Emmanuel Kant. So I know that it isn't all about honest disclosure. I lie.

I lie when something more important than telling the truth is happening, sometimes I lie when I embellish a story before I can even stop myself (the brain works so fast when I am free-styling things just pop out, I usually call myself out on these though which I'm hoping will continue to curtail them until eradicated), I lie at work where they pay me to do so, a few other areas too. Generally though I do my best not to lie.

The first failing is the shaky one. The accidental lies are annoying but can easily be rectified like so "I don't know why I said that ... the fish I caught was actually only this big", they're accidents anyway. The lies at work and generally in business transactions? Business is different, I have a totally different way of everything in business. I'll push authenticity as far as it can go in business, with surprisingly positive results, but primarily I have an objective and will be cold and ruthless to achieve it. I stop being me whenever it interferes with the objective (I don't know where I draw the line in business). I digress.


When something more important is happening

How do we measure this? The "No lies" principle is nice and clean, it makes things easy. Now I have just added something really subjective, which fucks it all up.

And here ... it is tough (see what PS posted above and what I will try and address below).

I think now about Aristotle again.
We know what is right and what is wrong. All of us that are functioning properly within a society. That is why I often post here where people are arguing in defence of their indiscretions and looking for acceptance to validate them "Don't play. You know, I know, we all know. It is wrong.", or similar, because we do.

Any attempt to formalise and define the ideas in the last paragraph have lead me to the same or similar bullshit as Kant and Mill got themselves into. I think it may stop there.

Do not be an enemy of culture.


Peace,

kowalski