Changing Your Programming

Changing Your Programming

I mentioned in the first book that I am not a motivational speaker.

I’m not anyone’s savior and I would rather men be their own self-sustaining solutions to becoming the men they want and need to be – not a Rollo Tomassi success story, but their own success stories.

That said, let me also add that I would not be writing what I do if I thought that biological determinism, circumstance and social conditioning were insurmountable factors in any Man’s life. Men can accomplish great things through acts of will and determination. God willing, they can be masters of those circumstances and most importantly masters of themselves.

With a healthy understanding, respect and awareness of what influences his own condition, a Man can overcome and thrive within the context of them – but he must first be aware of, and accepting of, the conditions in which he operates and maneuvers.

You may not be able to control the actions of others, you may not be able to account for women’s Hypergamy, but you can be prepared for them, you can protect yourself from the consequences of them and you can be ready to make educated decisions of your own based upon that knowledge.

You can unplug.

You can change your programming, and you can live a better life no matter your demographic, age, past regrets or present circumstances.

These are the last words from The Rational Male – Preventive Medicine. I wrote something similar in the first book too, but I’m quoting them here because they are just as important now as they were when I was writing them then. I’m not now nor have I ever been interested in creating a cult of Rollo. I’m not interested in creating better men, I’m interested in those men making themselves better men.

Descriptions and Prescriptions

You’ll have to forgive me, I wrote this part about a year ago, but I think it’s still relevant now. In part 4 of Preventative Medicine a commenter (who, for the record is not an InCel by any stretch) asked me why I had no real prescriptive plan for men to follow with regards to ‘preventing’ or avoiding the bad decisions associated with the time line I laid out in that series. This was my response:

Imagine for a moment I had the temerity to presume that I know exactly what a 60 year old reader experiences in his personal life with a post-menopausal wife. I could take a good stab at it, but anything specific I could prescribe for him would be based on my best-guess speculations and according to how I’ve observed and detailed things in this series or any of my past posts.

From my earliest posts at SoSuave (in 2004) I’ve had men ask me for some ‘medicine’ for their condition; some personalized plan that will work for them. This sentiment is exactly what makes PUA and manosphere ‘self-help’ speakers sell DVDs and seats at seminars. They claim to have the cure. I say that’s bullshit.

I’m not in the business of cures, I’m in the business of diagnoses. Imagine a PUA guru attempting to force fit their plans to accommodate that 60 year old man’s situation. Athol Kay makes attempts to remedy married men’s (non) sex lives, but what’s his real success rate? Is it even measurable? Even Athol recognizes that his MMSL outline is just a map, a diagnosis, that men have to modify for themselves per their individual experience and demographic. You see, your cure, your plan of action isn’t what another man’s will be, or your future son’s, or anyone else reading my work. I can give you a map, but you still have to make your own trail. I’m not a savior, you are your savior

Short version: I’m not interested in making men be better men, I’m interested in men making themselves better Men.

What’s more legitimate, my prescribing some course or template to follow that leads a man to a success that ultimately I define for a reader, or my laying out an accurate landscape for his better understanding and he creates his own success with it?

Are you your success or my success? I’d rather a Man be his own.

Most men already suspect they know what the keys are, and most even know how to use them, but what they really want is confirmation that they actually have the keys.

My approach to Game is defined in much broader terms than simply ‘how to get girls’, and I think for the better part of the manosphere the understanding of Game has evolved beyond rote memorization of scripts and plans. It’s gotten to a stage where even the most enthusiastic proponents of PUA techniques acknowledge a need for an individualized approach to relating and interacting with women based on a broader applied understanding of feminine psychology, sociology and the particular conditions that apply to themselves as well as the women they’re interacting with.

It’s been noted before, my approach to Game / Red Pill awareness is descriptive, not prescriptive.

I’m humbled by the men who email me and let me know how something I’ve written or shined a light on for them has saved them from suicide or some particular hell they would’ve endured longer in. For the most part though I get email and comments from men who tell me that they have built better lives for themselves because a Red Pill awareness made their situations more intelligible. I don’t sell a program or a prescription because each man’s circumstance is different, his acculturation is different, his ethnicity, society, upbringing, body composition and mental faculties are all different.

But we are all men. If the Red Pill is anything it’s a consortium of men who relate their individual experiences about women, about themselves and about their circumstances in what’s now become a feminine-primary social order. As I’ve stated in the past, I’m humbled and flattered to be considered one of the pillars of Red Pill awareness, but most of what I write is the result of piecing together the related experiences of other men.

I didn’t create the Red Pill, I just describe that awareness in terms I think are intelligible. I connect dots, but much of those dots are presented to me by a collective of men who’ve had common experiences. If those dots don’t follow, if those dots would be better connected in another way, I expect the Men who make up Red Pill awareness to offer their new ideas in an open exchange, in a marketplace of ideas.

Sometimes that marketplace gets weighed down with disingenuous critics, trolls and attention seekers, but this is the price, I believe, is necessary to distill and test the strength of those ideas. Only in a crucible of open debate where all are encouraged to participate can those ideas be sussed out.

Men with questions don’t frighten me; men with no questions do.

Law 18: Do Not Build Fortresses to Protect Yourself— Isolation is Dangerous
The world is dangerous and enemies are everywhere— everyone has to protect themselves. A fortress seems the safest. But isolation exposes you to more dangers than it protects you from-it cuts you off from valuable information, it makes you conspicuous and an easy target. Better to circulate among people, find allies, mingle. You are shielded from your enemies by the crowd.

From Nursing Power:

A handful of my male readers often ask why I don’t moderate comments, or that the message of Rational Male would be better served if I banned certain commenters. I’ve mentioned on several posts and threads as to why I won’t ever do that (except for blatant spamming), but in a nutshell it’s my fundamental belief that the validity of any premise or idea should be able to withstand public debate. People who aren’t confident of the strength of their assertions or ideas, or are more concerned with profiting from the branding of those weak assertions than they are in truth, are the first to cry about the harshness of their critics and kill all dissent as well as all discourse about those assertions.

That’s the primary reason I’ve never moderated; if people think I’m full of shit I’m all ears – I’m not so arrogant as to think I’ve thought of every angle about any idea I express here or on any other forum. However, the second reason I don’t censor, ban users or delete comments is that I believe it’s useful to have critics (usually women or fem-men) provide the gallery with examples of exactly the mentality or dynamic I’m describing in an essay. With a fair amount of predictability, a blue pill male or an upset woman will just as often prove my point for me and serve as a model for what I’ve described.

I never intentionally try to make rubes out of the critics I know will chime in about something, but I will sometimes leave out certain considerations I may have already thought about something, knowing it will get picked up on by a critic. I do this on occasion because the I know that the “ah hah! I got him, he forgot about X,Y, Z” moment serves as a better teaching tool and confirms for me that a critic does in fact comprehend what I’m going on about.

Last week Roosh came out against the various tribes of Game such as it is. While I understand his intent I must disagree with his methods. A couple of weeks ago I got into a bit of political discourse with regard to how the Feminine Imperative and how Hypergamy influences social dynamics. That post generated a lot of conversation, but from it I made this statement:

It’s my opinion that red pill awareness needs to remain fundamentally apolitical, non-racial and non-religious because the moment the Red Pill is associated with any social or religious movement, you co-brand it with an ideology, and the validity of it will be written off along with any preconceptions associated with that specific ideology.

Furthermore, any co-branding will still be violently disowned by whatever ideology it’s paired with because the Feminine Imperative has already co-opted and trumps the fundaments of that ideology. The fundamental truth is that the manosphere, pro-masculine thought, Red Pill awareness or its issues are an entity of its own.

As most of my readers know I have a great deal of respect for Roosh and I still do. Nothng is going to change that. I think time will tell what direction his push for Neomasculine philosophy truly goes in. As far as what he’s describing in that “new” doctrine there’s not much I disagree with. I’ll take issue with his anti-evolution, anti-evo psych stance. I’ll take issue with his want for some as yet undefined moralism; and not because I don’t think morality or reverence to a higher power shouldn’t be part of it, but rather because it pollutes and distorts open discourse.

I’m not an atheist, anyone who’s read my commentary on Dalrock’s site knows this. That said I don’t think there is a substitute for critical inquiry, and when that is stifled, that’s when we lean over into dogma.

From Moral to the Manosphere:

Putting angel’s or devil’s wings on observations hinders real understanding.

I say that not because I don’t think morality is important in the human experience, but because our interpretations of morality and justice are substantially influenced by the animalistic sides of our natures, and often more than we’re willing to admit to ourselves. Disassociating one’s self from an emotional reaction is difficult enough, but adding layers of moralism to an issue only convolutes a better grasp of breaking it down into its constituent parts. That said, I also understand that emotion and, by degree, a sense of moralism is also characteristic of the human experience, so there needs to be an accounting of this into interpretations of issues that are as complex as the ones debated in the manosphere.

Although I’m aware that observing a process will change it, it’s my practice  not to draw moralistic conclusions in any analysis I make because it adds bias where none is necessary. The problem is that what I (and others in the manosphere) propose is so raw it offends ego-invested sensibilities in people. Offense is really not my intent, but often enough it’s the expected result of dissecting cherished beliefs that seem to contribute to the well being of an individual.

There was a time I sat in a behavioral psychology class back in college. Behaviorism appealed to me because it was very nuts & bolts, not at all like the touchy-feely humanist schools of psychology. Behavior is the only reliable proof of motive. It was cause and effect, modify variables, and watch for behavior.

At one point I began to see that women are masters of operant conditioning – they had the natural reward 99% of men want, sex. Men’s behavior could be modified just by the prospect of sex, and they could also be influenced by negative reinforcement and punishment. It was one thing to make these observation, but quite another to express them in the classroom. Many of the more intelligent minds I dealt with then would adamantly refuse to recognize the truths that operant conditioning played. After I thought about it I understood that they were likewise motivated to deny what I thought was right in front of their faces.

I had connected some uncomfortable dots; dots that had the potential of making a man less desirable for having connected them. This was really the beginning of many more uncomfortable connections I would make later.

Roosh has tried to make a case that the Red Pill community (subred) has now reached critical mass. He sees it as inbred; a community of complainers – and in some instances I can understand that. Debate can often sound like complaining. However, what I get from Roosh now is a need for answers, it seems to me he’s looking for a plan of action. He wants something prescriptive for himself and other men to follow on with. I get it.

He’s still included Red Pill truths as being an important part of his new doctrine and I’d respect him for that, if not for the wholesale disownment of the consortium that’s been the testbed for those truths for so long. As I stated above, I think Neomasculinity may have some merit, I don’t disagree with about 90% of the manifesto Roosh went to great effort to put together. What I disagree with is how he’s initiated all of this. He does no favors to himself with casual dismissals of principles he knows are deeper than he wants to give credit to – in fact most are principles he influenced personally.

As for my part, I’m going to keep doing what I do and that’s making men aware of the world that’s been pulled over their eyes. I will likely have some strong disagreement with Roosh in the future, but as I’m fond of saying unplugging men from the matrix is dirty work. We’re both in the same family, and sometimes brothers will fight, and that’s OK.

I disagree with him that the Red Pill will cease to go on. It may be called something else, but it’s been around before he or I started writing about it. The “Red Pill”, like many other terms, is an abstraction; a place holder for an idea. Don’t like the Matrix movie references? Fine, but the truth is the truth and freely expressed ideas need words to describe them.

Maybe Neomasculinity is the prescription you need, but from what I can gather so far it’s a movement based on exclusion; not inclusion, not on a free exchange of ideas. Maybe the christianized Red Pill of Donalgraeme or Dalrock is a better prescription for you. Maybe you need the inspiration of a guy like Victor Pride and a better outlook on your physique.

Or maybe all you need is a truth and an awareness to help you lift yourself up. Yes, Red Pill awareness can be very depressing in the beginning, I’ve written several posts and book chapters dedicated to helping men come to terms with that, but ultimately it will be that awareness that becomes the catalyst for changing his life.

The Red Pill isn’t one size fits all, you have to tailor your own life with what it shows you.