The Tao of Game

There are a great many concepts in Game Theory that are difficult to accurately define. Understanding the intricacies of intergender dynamics is often a tough road to hoe due to individualized interpretations of what a particular term or concept should mean in a global sense. ‘Game Theory’ is even a term I’m kind of struggling with since people think it seems to exclude the actual practicing, or real world development of the same principles I explore on this blog. For the record, I believe it’s just as important to hone one’s PUA skills / tools as it is to understand why they work.

Ikigai

The concept of Alpha is another sticking point for a lot of men, both plugged-in or unplugged from the feminine Matrix – some even rejecting the concepts of alpha and beta wholesale. I find that for the most part people have a very tough time reconciling the unvarnished principles of Game Theory and, to a greater degree, the way Evolutionary Psychology compliments it, with a learned sense of moral or ethical justice they believe should be essential to human interactions. I think human beings, to varying degrees, have an in-born capacity for revulsion to ideas that reveal a very realistic, unavoidable nihilism existing in the fundamental nature of the world. By that I mean that we seem to have some feral-level refusal for what we think would be a hopeless situation. The Japanese have a term for this called “Ikigai“, loosely translated as “a reason for being”. It would not surprise me in the least if in the future we find that humans (and other higher order animals) have specific neural ‘software’ directly linked to this rejection of the hopeless. Obviously a neural wiring that promotes Ikigai would be a very valuable evolutionary survival asset for a species.

Paradoxically though, just in the suggesting of an evolved, biological root for rejecting nihilism, it confirms the validity of that hopeless condition. In other words, the same evo-psych-prompted root that grants us a capacity to desire justice or provides with us a sense of morality (however defined) is the same root that forces us to obstinately reject the reality of our situations. The same psyche that wants to reject environmentally valid concepts like alpha/beta, hypergamy, the SMP, or a plethora of other difficult to accept Game Theory ideas is the same psyche that wants to reject the hopelessness they may or may not represent.

Bear this in mind when you come across a new concept in Game. The reality we find ourselves in is very cruel when you approach it from a binary, right or wrong, absolutist standpoint. It may satisfy a need to feel self-righteous, but it’s never a good starting point for real understanding that may benefit you later. This is what detractors of evo-psych struggle with; factoring in a human element into environmental and biological determinants. We don’t call a cheetah running down a gazelle on the African savannah ‘evil’ or unjust, or the gazelle undeserving of death. It just is.

If I were to dangle a juicy raw steak in front of the nose of a hungry Doberman, could I blame the dog for taking a piece of my hand off with the steak when he bites at it? He’s just doing what a hungry dog does. When your wife’s vagina tingles in the presence of a Man displaying evolutionarily developed Alpha cues, or you get a hardon viewing the body of a beautiful naked woman, this is the biological imperative at work. It’s not right or wrong, it just is.

Biology Trumps Conviction

This position usually grates against the grain for people invested in the ideology of personal responsibility. They think it means biological determinism, and therefor grants a free pass for all sins. However, what I’m implying is that the overriding influence is that of our biology; there would be no need for convictions if it weren’t. The mistake lies in thinking that convictions are the measure and biology is the limiter. It’s not that you can resist temptation, but rather that the temptation exists in the first place. There is no temptation without motivation. What most people fail to grasp here is that no conviction to alter behavior, mindset, belief, etc. would be necessary for an individual if the operative state (biology in this instance) weren’t conflicting with what we perceive are in our overall best interests. Biology trumps conviction because it is the operative state for us.

Biology determines what convictions we need to construct in order to optimize our existences. We then compound this with progressively more complex layerings of “conviction” upon our state in order to address inconsistencies in our natural desires. And then, conversely, our natural impulses will prompt us to rationalize loopholes in the articles of our convictions which will allow for our biological imperatives to be expressed.

Take sex out of the equation for a moment. As an am-circuit bodybuilder I have to stay cut for an upcoming competition. So I effectively starve myself for the prior 6 weeks of all the food that my body instinctively wants. Every fiber in my body wants to pound down a slice of pizza, but my conviction to look good and be at my optimal best for the competition overwhelms that primal urge. You’d say “well, see, conviction trumps biology”, but the operative state is what my biology is prompting me to do; eat starchy / sugary foods in order to prevent starvation and maximize my survival capacity by retaining energy reserves in case of emergency. My hunger is the operative state; without it that conviction to repress it isn’t extraordinary. Conviction is subordinate to biology, because right after the pose-down I’m at the pizzaria eating 3 slices of suprema.

Because my biology is the operative state, inevitably conviction will be unsustainable to prevent it from manifesting in some form. Some of these are socially acceptable, some of these are socially forgivable, some of these will earn you a life in prison. Sometimes that means the girl gets drunk, he was cute and she bangs the guy in spite of herself. Sometimes it means celibate priests become pedophiles as their only means of sexual expression, and sometimes it means a homosexual comes out of the closet. There are social consequences for all these expressions to varying degree, but again, the motivator is  the biological imperative.

The sexual marketplace as we know it today is the result of biological opportunism intermingling with societal buffers that are in a constant state of flux. Religious convictions and appeals to moralism are no insulation against hypergamy and the sexual marketplace. In fact, often, the more ardent the conviction, the more influential the biological imperative.

I find it’s a much healthier position to accept a balance between our biologically derived impulses and our higher aspirations. It’s not one or the other. It’s OK to want to fuck just for the sake of fucking – it doesn’t have to be some source of existential meaning. It is as equally unhealthy to convince oneself that self-repressions are virtues as it is to think that unfettered indulgences are freedoms. There is a balance.