The narcissist is the narcissistic supply of the codependent – the other only exists as a drug that fuels your own self acceptance.
The codependent attempts to “pay” for the drug and might even be fair in the trade, might be attempting collaborative game, not without throwing tamtrums / ultimatums of their own from time to time.
The narcissist instead “lures” offers superficial goods, caters to the codependent’s weaknesses and prey and extracts as many resources as they can before discarding them, playing competitive game since the start, and every move is calculated to win over the codependent, while every move of the codependent is calculated to control, tame and keep the narcissist or, “work things out”.
The narcissist finds someone to adore them and the codependent finds something to adore and both fill their self acceptance until the transaction gets exhausted. In the exchange, the goods go to the narcissist and the craps to the codependent. If the codependent has a martir / victim complex and the narcissist has a sadist angle, this can go on for quite a while.
The codependent ends up asking how was it possible that all the goods where there and they weren’t able to take them, and regretting all they paid for nothing. The narcissist ends up annoyed at the codependent’s attempt at a “fair exchange”, but with a feeling of superiority over the codependent’s weakness and blindness.
After many rounds, codependents might understand the competitive games and start playing them themselves – switch to narcissim.
The “getting in contact with your feewwingss” thing is making me think a lot. Leap brings this up from the comments, old shit right?, but it opens new angles:
“Most men, myself included, have been trained to either ignore emotions or only relate to the ones that matter to women. I didn’t personally go all the way with that, though I’m unsure if that was a choice due to art or me drawing a line and telling society to fuck off.
Woe to the man who gets in touch with his passionate anger.”
Men who control their emotions are better suited to survive. A proper man, a strong and confident man, has to excel under stress, has to appear to make easy what is hard for everyone else. And then this man should have enough spare emotional energy to enjoy life and reap on the profits, and reproduce, and pass down his legacy. Cue: the grumpy man doesnt cut it.
But the shortcut to mastering your emotions is having none.
Does it work? yeah. Short term it does. The wave of bullshit is coming? turn it off. You have an efervescence of bad feelings and anxiety surging inside and cant turn it off? shake it out. Put it out there. Hit stuff. Man up. You don’t want to lose it under pressure. Don’t want to deal with it. Turn it off. Vampire Diaries style.
But this doesnt allow you to understand your own feelings / emotions, and, at the end, your emotions are the ones in charge, not your rational brain nor your skills. Your emotions sustain your belief and your identity and are the glue for your relational networks. So if you’re not aware and dont have emotional intelligence, if you cant command and understand and feel, and your emotional skills are limited to turn stuff off, block control repress and redirect, youre an EASY pray for emotional manipulators.
Guess whos manipulating you? Media. Society. Religions. Family. Friends. People. Relationships. Everyone. And your own emotions, that you dont control, are also manipulating other people. It’s a dark game played behind curtains and the most evident sign is what happens when you question it all.
It’s not the rational mind what’s blocking you. It’s not a logical puzzle. Question your life right now. The country, the city, the friends, your god, your pillars, and say: it’s all bullshit. Cancel your story. Take your most sacred belief and question it. Can you? or something inside shakes away from it?
What you cant handle you dont own. It owns you. You’re it’s bitch. And how exactly did you get into this position, where you respond to something and are unable to question, but you go with it. When exactly did you agree to be something else’s bitch? when did you surrender? do you remember? what if you hadnt?
Or. Who benefits from this? Who created this shit?
But I might be getting in too deep. Here’s where Emma would chime in:
“That.. sounds very profound, although I didn’t quite grasp it.”
Thanks baby, I get that a lot.
And. Women. You would think that since women are not taught to repress their emotions they are better off. But, no, since women are protected and treated like children and get a free pass and have other people to take on the consequences for them and get free respect and the natural entitlement that follows… no. They have access to a wider range of emotions, but one that is also out of touch with reality and stuck in the childhood, a meaningless, out of control limbo / mess of preferences and unsorted waves of sensorial, biological urges and minute bullshit. Sorry. Emotions for their own sake are not enlightment.
Intelligence is the ability to solve problems. The communication with reality and the know-how define it.
You have one gender with contact with reality but no emotional lexicon. And the other gender with emotional lexicon but no contact with reality.
If you havent stopped by the rawness lately or you dont know gettingbetter.com, make a room in your schedule and prepare to absorb these articles. This is going to do you much better than anything I can post here at the moment.
For once, while Im gaining understanding of my own emotional body and seeing more clearly what I’ve been doing and where I should go, I am ALSO gaining insight on differences between gender behavior and just plain craziness.
Check this out and you’ll see what I mean, from gettingbetter:
————————————-
‘TILL DEATH DO US PART
BPD and The Marriage Crucible
EDIT: Shari asked me to take down her post, so go read it here instead. Well worth your time.
Great and succinct post from Roosh, to which I would add:
Everyone is wanting you to fail, except of the people who benefit from you winning. Those people NEED you to win.
Not that they necessarily share your goals, but everyone needs an icon. Something that represents something else they are invested in. In some cases that benefit is material, say, like in politics or religion. Or anything else involving money.
And not that they can give you advice either. If they do it’s probably going to be shitty advice. Advice should be taken, only, from people who A) have achieved what you want to achieve and B) want you to succeed.
A roadmap to success is to build a group of people who need you to win. A group of people who benefit from you making it. Be it because they believe, or because their share of the pie comes from yours.
If it’s not your dad nor your sisters, family and friends, well too bad. Fuck it. Leave and get a new circle. Form a new tribe.
When you lack logical rigurosity and the willingness to change your ideas to fit uncomfortable data and facts, magical thinking helps you wrap the unknown into beautiful lies that make you feel good.
The rationalization hamster is a magical creature.
What about irrecoverable omegas? Betas could make it work. But irrecoverable omegas, who maybe are screwed by permanent reasons entirely beyond their control (and mental illness and personality disorders count!) cannot make it work no matter what. I think the Game community would help themselves if, instead of saying “Game works no matter what!” and then getting sniped at by haters who then cite irrecoverable omegas, Game advocates wisely countered with “Game works, except for omegas, who need to focus on [something else].”
This would peel away one of the biggest weapons of the haters: pointing to the small group of completely hopeless omegas for whom Game would never work and citing that group as proof that Game doesn’t work. The Game community needs to stop getting slammed by the outliers. Vox is the only site run by a non-crazy person who actually recognizes and writes about omegas-who they are, what happens to them, where they go. (Game for Omegas is written by a gamma and DA is no longer writing a blog. The rest, like W&N, are crazy.)
Then the question becomes: what makes for hopeless omegadom?
———————————————————————————————————
I was an omega myself. I know that question very well. What makes for hopeless omegadom?
Or, what can help you when you’re helpless? or, which medicine can cure you from an incurable, terminal sickness?
I
How about if you’re a stupid, awkward ugly fat unfunny bunny… who was running from home because nobody wanted you… and you were chasing a cute bunny who wanted to be your friend, but she got hit by a truck and is all splattered over the street now… and oh you also got hit by a truck while crossing the street… and your spine is broken… and you can barely move while a hungry cat comes around… oh he’s eating your legs now… and see that fly on your nose? its injecting you with larvae…. and a vulture just took your left eye, and your right one is kinda blurry… and bleeding… and you see that pink fluid around? the truck’s hit made a crack on your skull and half of your brain is spread all over the street…
What can help you now?
II
Some cultures like the Japanese do these over the top hopeless scenarios to make the heroic achievement bigger. The bunny would stand up and fight back ultimately defeat the truck and get the girl. That’s why I liked manga so much. Occident though, specially in movies, routinely makes the hero fail, and then an unexpected accident / miracle happens.
So what will make it for our bunny? heroism or magic?
Thing is, the bunny is already taking pride as a martyr.
III
What makes for hopeless omegadom?
Nothing, because of the “hopeless” there. The premise defeats the question. The more you feed it with answers, the more it will have to emphasize the hopelessness aspect to keep the outcome even.
The scenario is looking for a very particular flavor of pain. One that is both extreme and stable. It’s a worst case scenario, but also, one that can’t change. This means that nothing worse can happen, unless you attempt to repair it or to bring good stuff into it… because when there’s good stuff, all can go fucked up again. So good stuff = pain. But it’s also looking for validation, self victimization, transfer of blame: ego survival, in a fucked up sense.
In other words, every solution, every attempt to change the scenario just brings a challenge to make the problem more complex, to make the scenario meaner.
The more you bring help or solutions, the bigger the problem becomes.
What can heal you when you want to be sick?
Nothing. First you must want to be healthy.
IV
Usually a full dosis of pain and a complete failure is needed for that frame to change.
Death is needed. Say. The bunny just dies, and nobody gives a fuck because everyone is dancing at the party next door. Actually the bunny’s leather made it into a carpet and a pair of shoes: the bunny’s life and suffering and complete existence have no value.
If the ego return is cut. If the hopeless stop getting the “solutions”. If you stop feeding the machine, the machine usually collapses. With death, with lack of return, with lack of answers – chances are the mind will just let go of the hopeless scenario, because it didnt work.
And you might see the bunny suddenly standing up, growing a leg, picking up his brains and going home. Yeah the same bunny who couldnt walk.
You´re likely to see it again, ran over by a different truck at a different street tomorrow, though.
V
In order to give the omega a proper treatment, the premise has to change. The omega cant be “hopeless” anymore. And in the process, the omega identification itself will die. With so much pain, ego and death involved, you´ll see all sort of defense mechanisms here, even if you’re sorting this kind of stuff in yourself.
It’s easier to look away than it is to change what “it feels like death” to change.
The solution, at the end, is to get behind of the pain / shame / wants / identification drive and turn off that projector. Turn off that movie.
And look at what is really there.
————
Edit: a reader corrected me on the meaning of “what makes for”, turns out it means “what constitutes” instead of “what can be done for” … oh well.
Let’s say you have never played baseball, but you are in a situation where you will get a million dollars if you score a homerun, or get killed if you dont. And you only have one try.
You go in the field, grab the bat, breath, assume the position, the machine throws that unique ball at you, and you swing.
What are your chances of hitting a homerun?
I
See, sometimes it happens.
Sometimes someone hits that lucky homerun. And against all common sense they keep hitting one homerun after another, without really knowing how they are doing it. We call these the prodigies, the miracles, the naturals. The media and eventually the history fills us with these stories. Mozart, the Beatles, Einstein. It’s a compelling story: some people just have it.
And sometimes when pushed against the unfathomable, in do-or-die situations, when all the bridges have been burned, an unlikely prodigy awakens. David defeats Goliath, four musketeers defeat an army, a gladiator becomes king, a kiddo with two karate moves grabs the title and the girl.
Lucky strikes happen. Miracles happen. Material for movies.
Highly inspirational stuff that makes you “believe”.
Which is bullshit.
II
The win / lose, success or die, go big or go home, prodigy / miracle / luck frame is not how you get shit done.
See. While some of these stories are true, most are just fabrications. Media has a business, and its business is selling you the story. The highly inspirational figures and stories are marketing campaigns, whose aim is to raise the perceived value of a specific system, which has money and resources invested into making you believe.
So believe, you do.
And when your belief starts to fade, a new inspirational story and figure emerges out of nowhere. Oh, such a lucky strike. Or such a prodigy.
The moment you believe the story, the moment you buy into the binary thinking of success / failure, you become part of the mass of people who can only experience life by consuming.
Because the other side of the story is that you cant. You cant go in the field and make a homerun. You cant win. You’re not as talented, as lucky, or a prodigy enough. So you cant bare the thought of going all or nothing and burning every bridge ever created. The stakes are too high. You dont even try.
You consume the stories because you cant create your own.
But Im going to tell you how you can. How to get shit done.
III
Let´s say you have never played baseball, but you are going to spend a few months on the field. The machine is going to throw one ball after another. You pay by the hour, but it’s cheap and you have it covered. When you miss the ball, no one cares. When you hit the ball, you get some cheering. When you are clueless, you get some advice from a more experience hitter. Your main reward though is the learning, watching your body adjust to the game, and the sound that emerges from the ball every time you hit it hard and properly, and watching it fade in the horizon.
What are your chances of hitting a homerun?
Now let’s say when the process is over, you comprise your top game, your best moves, and make a portfolio, which is what the rest of the world are going to see. That is your net worth.
IV
In case you missed it, that second scenario is the nurturing approach. Our parents job is to enable a sandbox where we can fail and attempt without real consequences. Somewhere we can play. A game where we can find our strengths and our own moves, and polish ourselves before going into the external world.
Then the formal education is another sandbox.
Both systems are broken. The rewards are misdirected and the focus is in the wrong places. I could critique this stuff for years but let’s skip it for now. The point is that when you leave that process, if you have been properly indoctrinated, your core belief is that:
You cant.
So you have to settle. You have to aim to survive. To buy stuff to fill some weird void that was also induced in you by the system. Get social status and external worth to compensate for your lack of thereof. So you have to believe the stories and live their glory by projection. And whenever your sandbox, that you never formerly abandoned, get´s attacked or, when shit gets real, or, when a big opportunity emerges and finds you unprepared, or, when your own dissatisfaction finally pushes you to the edge and you wonder what would happen if you went for it, what was “really” waiting out there for you…
… you get derived to the first scenario. The one-hit, homerun-or-die, 0.0001% chances one. And it’s too late. And the stakes are too high.
V
But scoring homeruns isnt the problem. The frame is.
Making it big isnt the problem. The frame is.
It doesnt matter if you’re a kid or a senior or how much you have invested in your current frame. This is how you get shit done:
First, quit all distractions. Quit surviving. Quit do-or-die.
Then, embrace do-and-live.
Procure yourself with a sandbox.
Get a mother to nurture you and a father to guide you, or be your own mother and father. Create a sandbox where you can afford to make mistakes. A sandbox where you can play. To your strengths. Where the price for failed attempts is marginal, and the returns for achievements are marginal as well, and where you can ask for advice when you dont know what you’re doing. Where what really matters is your own experience, watching your mind and body adjust to the game, and the sound that emerges from the ball when you hit it hard and properly.
And every time you make a homerun, honor that, hone that. And iterate. And while you are at it, aim for greatness. Aim for excellence. Make it the best, make it count.
If you´re a company, keep it small and contained and cheap and make products. If you´re a writer, retreat to an inexpensive beach and write. If you´re a casanova, go work in a bar. If you´re a business person, make inexpensive deals and grow steadily. Or get jobs were you get paid to learn. And do you best on every step and play like there are no consequences, because there arent.
Then compile your best moves and share them with the world.
And iterate.
When you operate like this homeruns are not the goal. They are an inevitable part of the process.
VI
And last. Most of the stories out there are the nurturing kind. Someone had a kid and decided to make them a star. Some company needed a product and grabbed someone and created a sandbox around them. Some movement needed a leader and some circle needed a villain. And they contain their mistakes and maximize their achievements or viceversa, to make you believe. If you dont know already, that’s how business are made.
Making it big means achieving homeruns. And your top 10 game is all people care about. When you make it big, due to their belief, most people are going to assume that it was easy for you, that you got lucky, that you’re a natural, that you were just borned with it.
The limits on your own mind are different than the limits in the real world. However the limits on your mind prevent you from doing stuff that is actually possible, making them impossible by default.
The real answer for everything is: I dont know.
If you think you know, you´re in trouble.
If you think you know, and what you know is that you “can’t”, you just materialized that.
Say, if you go to the gym for six months, do the proper diet, do salsa and acting classes, break your comfort zone, host parties and make new friends, go spend time overseas – and by the end of it you didnt experience any transformation, then you “know”, or you almost know.
Knowing that you cant without trying is just a defense to protect your current comfort zone.
So it´s not really a “cant”, but a want. You dont want. That´s ok. But it´s not about what´s possible, but about what you´re willing to give up in exchange.
Talking you out of it wont work. Even forcing you do to the actions wont work since you would sabotage the process.
But if life forced you, by burning your house, burning your country, burning your life, and you had to survive by changing – you would do it.
The excuses are a waste of time.
You want to dance? you can. You want to become more extroverted? you can. You want to play tennis? you can.
Can you be as good as Federer, as charismatic as Clooney, as successful as Bill Gates? you´ll find the limits there. Because you´re comparing against other people, you´re entering a competition.
You can do a lot of stuff. It doesnt mean you will “win” nor that you´ll be “as good as”
Though, chances are you´re using the “as good as” as the excuse for not doing. The two are unrelated. Say, you dont need to be “as good as” the french masterchef in order to have a restaurant. Dont need to be Clooney to have charisma. Dont need to be Federer to play tennis and win tennis matches. No one of these guys are preventing you to learn and have your own quota of success.
Going with the herd / following the rule is good / useful when the herd itself is good / useful / when the rules are good.
Rebellion / doing things your own way / trusting yourself is useful when the herd is misguided / bad or for some reason the herd emasculates you.
The herd on its own has no value. The herd has its own survival drive. At expenses of yours.
Your own drive on its own has no value. You just want to survive. At expenses of anything else.
The drive that puts you in the herd is the same drive that breaks you apart from the herd. Its your own survival. The reason behind the most altruist action is the same one behind of the most egoistical action. It´s you.
But you either do what you´ve been told, or you do your own.
To properly survive, you have to blend in. We´re social animals.
To win, though, you have to do your own: do what no one else is doing, reach where no one else has reached, be indispensable, be special.
The more you blend the lower your value. The less you blend the higher your value. And value in this context goes along with danger, safety and responsibility. The more you blend the safer = the less you´re responsible, the more anything you do is to blame on somebody else, the more of a victim, or a sheep, you are.
The more you stand out, the higher your value, but also the more dangerous you are, the more you can do right, or wrong, the more repercussions your mistakes will bring, but also the bigger your victories.
Totally standing out / breaking completely apart from the herd isnt alpha anymore but omega. If you transcend the rules of any game, say, basketball, to the point the game itself is unrecognizable… then you´re a threat to that herd. On the other hand, you might have invented a new sport, a new society, a new herd for others to come.
Following most of the rules and breaking a couple is the recipe for genius.
Breaking all of the rules is a recipe for either a saint or a criminal. Or both.
Not knowing the rules is a recipe for awkwardness / extinction.
Following all the rules is a recipe for never being alive.
But back to the point.
The rules are set up as a median. The rules define mediocrity. The rules are set up for the masses, not for the individuals. The rules are generalizations. Principles. Nobody is there where you are, but you. And nobody has exactly your recipe for you. If you take what you have and you make it fit in the rule, chances are with that you also sacrificed your own value, which at the end is also bad for the herd.
Because the herd as a whole benefits from the individual talents and rarities of each specific sheep when they are put to good use. The herd benefits from individual game – even when at times such game is destructive.
So. Back to you. You either do your own and you´re guided by yourself or you do what´s needed to blend. There are ways to do both.
In order to even consider that as a choice you have to be aware of both games.
That means when doing your own, being aware of what rules you´re breaking. And when deciding to blend, being aware of what aspects of you you are sacrificing. That means knowing the social game deeply, and knowing yourself even deeper.
That awareness has been banned from our society since the beginning of time. We are born in a herd, and the herd is a nest for many other herds: religions, ideologies, classes, education, marketing. Practically everything out there is telling you what to do, and telling you how you “should” feel about it. To the point finding someone who owns their own circumstances is rare. In the context Im presenting, that makes everyone a “loser”, or a sleeper, or a sheep, or a misguided person, or a zombie, or someone who doesnt know who they are, and thus, cant be happy, because cant be fulfilled, because their real needs and drives and ambitions are yet to be found.
And then.
The herd serves a purpose and that purpose is survival. The survival of the herd. The survival of the rules of the herd. And the herd operates on a tunnel vision, qualifying anything that supports the herd as “good” and anything contrary to the herd as “bad” or as a foe. Which is an illusion, obviously. The herd needs soldiers that never wake up from that illusion or they would be able to decide not to press the trigger / not to go into war / not to purchase / not to go into the economy of self deprecation needed to sustain the system / not to burn themselves etc. The herd needs soldiers. A soldier cant be free.
Now do we live in a good army? are the instructions given to you good for you? do the leaders of the herd live by the rules they impose on the rest, or do they dispatch orders to benefit themselves at expenses of the herd? Is the herd set up in the way of a garden, taken care by a loveful garderner who spends all day procuring the harmony and providing the needed nutrients, and where the most beautiful flowers are encouraged to flourish… or is the herd set up in the way of a farm, where the sheep are kept under control so the necessary goods can get extracted from them, and at the end of the day they are shipped to the slaughter so they can get squeezed to the last drop?
What do you see? Are we ruled by love? Or are we owned? Is awareness celebrated, or is it dangerous? Are you embraced when you shine, or are you embraced when you hide?
So I understand the goodness of going along with other people. Fitting in. Having a family. Valuable nets. Community movement. Rules. Order. Belonging.
However, as I see it, the whole thing is owned by the wrong forces.
So as long a Im here I can only preach for self awareness and owning yourself. Rebellion is needed. For anyone aiming for real happiness.
Now, could this herd, could the current state of things survive a major segment of the population becoming aware enough to not do anything that would fuck them up? Could this herd survive if people were lucid, awaken, responsible, and happy? no. The herd would die, the herd would change.
Looks matter, but looks is not what gets you laid. Even if you´re stunning the girl is gonna put you through tests. I see the order of importance as:
Game (personality, masculinity, drive, demeanor, charm, dominance)
Social proof (the throne other people puts you in)
Assets (stuff you own and display)
Looks (body, clothes)
Some of these are interchangeable and every bulletpoint influences the rest.
Say. Your looks say a lot about the rest of these items. If you´re fat and smell silly it says a lot about your game, social proof etc. Looks are the presentation card, and they convey the rest of the traits. So in a way, looks are “everything”. But they are everything because of what they say about you.
Assets. The girls you attract with assets are not the good kind. But again, assets can produce attraction as they also convey personality traits, game, etc. It´s different if you own a motorcycle or if you own a family motorhome or a corvette. What you own says stuff about you, what kind of person you are, what´s your position in the hierarchy, what´s your tribe.
Social proof. This is the vital external thing. Because girls go with the popular, center of the social circle guy, and in society is where your dominance is measured. This is what conveys safety. Girls are herd animals – there´s nothing more attractive than the center of the herd. Social proof or lack of thereof says important stuff about you.
And all this stuff that says stuff about you is going to be used to measure you. Measure what?
Game. At the end this is what counts, because when its you and her alone, all the other stuff has to be true reflection of who you really are, and it has to show in your interpersonal interactions. If there´s dissonance you´re up for a long, uphill and losing battle. Everything else emanates from here.
In short looks, assets, social proof are measurable things that interconnect with each other, and are all reflection of your Game. And your Game itself is just another reflection of the “true” you, which in this context is just your genes, since this is a breeding / reproductive game.
If you’re trying the “be yourself” just to find such self isnt appreciated, and that you’re only appreciated when you bend yourself into what the world wants you to be, which is not “you”… what’s going on?
Here’s the news. You dont have a value.
As long as we talk in terms of appreciation, money, success, respect, etc, you dont have a value. Being yourself is no strategy to gain value, on its own.
Value, as a constructed thing, needs two. Needs a product and a consumer. The product screams “value”, but ultimately value is in the eye of the consumer.
Just like the price for an iphone on the middle of the ant-farm world is zero. Or just like the value of a great violinist drastically changes whether he’s playing on a subway or if he’s playing a solo act on an expensive theater. In short, who are you playing for? your audience determines your value.
But let’s get deeper.
We’ve got cards. Resources. Genes. Abilities. Stuff. How do you feel about what you’ve got, when the audience is gone? when there’s no one to pay for your stuff, when no external value and no exchange is happening… what’s left? who is you? when you stop all the games and trades and rules and stay in that moment, in silence. What’s there?
Feel happy? feel empty? feel content? anxious? do you have energy to spare or a hole that needs energy? are you self motivated and centered on your own happiness, or is it a chase? are you enough? who are you for yourself? are you, right there, playing violin on a subway on your mind, or playing on an expensive theater? notice that you’re not doing anything. But how do you FEEL and what do you PERCEIVE your value is?
That’s your inner value.
And when you stop playing games to please and comfort, when you stop all the tradings, schemas and masks… that’s your self.
And no matter how you feel about it you’re sitting on a pile of gold. We all are.
But let’s get deeper.
So you are sitting on a pile of gold. Your flesh your muscles your thoughts your abilities your… you. Your strategy, your social strategy, your survival strategy, is to exchange “you” for the stuff outside of you that you want.
And your true value, the market value, is defined by that transaction. And the value of what you get is also defined by that transaction.
Picture quickly, the value of getting the girl of your dreams in exchange of your sexual orientation. The value of getting the best food in the world in exchange of your ability to taste. The value of getting money in exchange of your freedom to spend it. And so on.
The winning strategy, like in any business, is to get more for less. More money for less work, more peace for less war, more love for less stress, more power for less conflict, etc.
And the key to do that is to maximize your market value.
So how? how do you that? Let’s summarize so far:
A) You’re a spiritual being. You’re an animal. You didnt come here to play games. You didnt come here to submit and follow and get lost in a market of values that doesnt give a fuck about “you”, but its only interested on you in terms of what they can get from you, to keep some abstract and ultimately nonsense, impersonal machine running. You came here to be you. This moment is the celebration of you. And it’s only happening once. Wasting it is a shame.
B) You want stuff. You value stuff outside of you. Even if you keep quiet, celebrating that oh so shiny moment of you, you want the exchange, you NEED the exchange. Its not so much about just needing other people, but needing to be part of that impersonal and macabre machine somehow, and play the part that “you” were meant to play on it. Because its a game. And games are fun… but not just that. You need the machine, because the machine is also you.
C) The machine still doesnt give a fuck about you. Unless you give the machine what the machine wants. The market doesnt give a fuck about you, that oh so special and shiny and real and true you. Because the machine, the market, the outside world, has its own self, its own needs, its own otherness, its own value, and it only cares about you in terms of what you have to offer.
D) Hey. Just reverse that, and that’s exactly how you view the machine and the market as well. You dont care, you dont give a fuck other than what the market has to offer you. You’re as selfish as you accuse the machine to be. You truly, honestly dont give a fuck, about other than the stuff you already give a fuck about. You are, after all, the machine. At least you are, for anyone who’s not you.
E) You’re on par on this game. You are the market.
If I had to state the strategy quickly, it goes like this: only proceed on transactions that are favorable on your own terms. That’s your succinct recipe for success and happiness.
But let’s get deeper.
How do you do this stuff? what’s the winning strategy? how do you turn your inner value, or your inner sense of self, your goods, cards, genes, your imagined pile of gold and your expensive theater where you play the solo act… how do you make that real?
Let’s start on the easy, stating how you do not.
The worst move is to sacrifice your own self in exchange of any kind of goods.
And even worse if such goods are the imaginary kind, like, the kind of goods that are supposedly going to make you feel better for having sacrificed yourself.
The “dont be yourself”, AKA fake, pua, beta, doormats, lostsoul camps fall here. You want something from the machine, love, acceptance, money, happiness, you name it. So you price yourself at zero, and give everything, in exchange of what you wanted, or at least some of it. Then wonder why you cant taste flavors anymore, why what you wanted doesnt fulfill you, etc. Like working 20 hours a day in exchange of 15 days of vacations a year. Go and really think that one. Like accepting anal rape in exchange of the medication you need to tolerate even more rape, plus some papers measuring how good of a taker you are.
Just dont. I’ll say it again. Dont. If you’re on that path, quit already.
So, when we come to this world it becomes quickly apparent, unless we’re either lucky or nurtured into an already tested mold of success and value, that our real core and persona have no value, and that the market wants something else. We get celebrated, punished, molded, into what the market wants. We learn what works our should. At best, we incorporate it. At worst, we fake it. At even worse, we fake it and then believe on it.
But even the lucky ones feel it. Every child star, athlete, successful people, even they feel it. Even if they’ve got it easy from the start, they feel it. They are worthless: their real persona has no value. Their market value depends on what the market wants. The actor would be nowhere without his physique, the tennis player would be nowhere without his trophies, the hot girl would be nowhere without… etc. It’s all on the magazines, on the buzz, on the superficial appreciation. Its all displayed and ranked on some ancient, pre-human state of things, its never about them. Its about the audience. And it all can be taken away.
And when you grow up and start discerning the market it becomes even more apparent. The market operates on face value. Appearances. Safety. Fear. Herd movements. Hunger. Primal stuff – powerful primal drives guided by simplistic, reductionist perceptions. Say. Flavor trumps substance.
The moth goes to the flame, doesnt it. It cant help it. It’s shiny.
So let’s go to the surface now. Enough of deep. Let’s tie it up:
Add sugar.
There’s a form of love, which might as well be the only “real” form of love, that is not about a transaction. Its a spiritual bridge that transmits information. All the truth. It’s a powerful force that barres your ego and everything you think you are and renders the whole universe to nothing, and makes you whole with it, and makes you heal and trascend and shiny happy in a pre-post-non human way. But if you are reading so far, this isnt what you are after, right?
Because wanting to get stuff from the world – wanting to know if your self is enough to get stuff from the world and how to do it is transactional.
So let’s skip love – true love.
How do you get stuff:
By giving them what they want. On your terms. And in exchange of what you want. On your terms. And I can say on your terms all day long, but it is, and will always be, about giving. Giving. Them. What. They. Want.
That’s how you get stuff.
Getting stuff is the business of giving.
Got the goods? deliver. Got ideas? ship them. Got skills? perform them. Whatever is what you’ve got, use it. Be your fucking self, on the market. Focus on giving, and if your value is high, the returns will be even higher.
And how do you maximize your value:
1) Start off your pile of gold. If you have problems dealing with who you are, if your perception of inner value is tampered with the perception of your market value, just cut it loose. If you find that “you” is nothing but an excuse, quit the excuse. Quit what you have to quit and burn what you have to burn. Destroy until what you have is whole, and you feel whole. Cut the fake until what you have is, indeed, you, and its shiny, or dark, or whatever is what is you. And from now on this is something you will never, ever betray. This is your compass now.
2) Find your market. Figure who your audience is. Figure who wants you, wants what you already have, figure who wants it the most, the very special (but hey, at the end of the day insignificant and value-less) snowflake of you, figure who benefits from it, who wants… fuck, who wants to PAY for what you already have. Find your market, find your tribe.
3) Figure how you stand up in the competition. Figure what you have to improve, figure the shape your inner-real self needs to adopt to cater to that market. This is not longer about “your self” (but dont worry, you’ll NEVER betray it) but about your presentation and how easily will YOUR market get you, and what’s your advantage over other people / products offering the same as you. Which are and will be many.
4) Cater the fuck out of them. Add sugar. Add color. Add shiny. And whatever you mold your shape into, make it as a way to make your true, real self even more apparent, even more accessible, and bigger, so you and your real self can grown and develop within. Expose that value. Push it over the top. Peacock it.
See, in Vox’s Hypergamouse comic, where the character is advised to “be himself” and he runs into a random girl stating he’s seen StarWars a hundred times… his fail aint assuming his real self. His fail is talking to THAT girl. Because he should be talking to a girl dressed as Princess Leia in a StarWars convention. His fail is not finding his market.
Got a steak? add salt and sell it to the carnivores.
Got icecream? add sugar and sell it to the fat people.
And put it in a nice package. At a price. And pass the voice.
While you can sell package / sugar / salt without an icecream or a steak on it – while you can fake what the market wants with no “you” or substance involved, the transaction will make you empty. Whavever you’ve got, that’s it. That’s your product. The truth. Then cater.
And there’s plenty of people hungry of you. Only waiting for a bridge to come over.
Whatever you’ve got, find your market. Cater to them. Compete, grow, and deliver.
When you seek approval you put other people on a pedestal.
That pedestal is made of your own morals and ego.
The person you put on a pedestal is supposed to incarnate the ideal – your own. You project the ideal on a person so you can get the ideal´s approval, so you can approve (or disapprove) your own person. You feed on their love and punishment, you try harder, you try to do what´s good, or bad, or you rebel, all by yourself, against this imaginary thing.
You feed a fake system of values so you can be loved by a higher order.
Role play – identity masturbation.
But as it happens… this person has a moral / standards on their own. Actually, unlike your ideals, that person exists. And with that, there´s conflict.
Either they cant play the part properly -> you cant pedestalize them fully -> you cant get enough approval. OR.
They play the part properly -> you pedestalize them fully -> you get approval at the expense of living by THEIR moral standards, on the pretense these are your own.
…
Seeking approval / putting other people on your pedestal is as egoistical and sick as it gets. You might not be abusing other people, but you´re abusing yourself while pretending it´s them doing it. In short, dont.
You are the one. Yeah. Yourself.
Instead of finding external dummies to project your own values and then act as a follower for that fake herd, be your own pastor. And open your windows so you can relate to other people on their own terms – on their own realities – and in your own terms.
I joined a semi-religious sect (ontological coaching) for a couple of months a long while ago. It surprised me to see how regular people would question their lives and go deep and grow and reach for better, when they had the support of a herd. It didnt matter that such herd was ultimately misguided. Their belief would allow them to do “crazy” stuff and assimilate knowledge that would take years to be transmitted if you first had to take each one out of the herd, one at a time.
All because they felt safe. Because they were doing what everyone else was doing. All because they belonged.
So. Belonging to a herd puts you to sleep. The herd cant illuminate you. Illuminating yourself and owning your circumstances requires personal work and, ultimately, it breaks you apart from the herd. The herd mentality is the opposite of an illuminated mentality.
But, culture gets to you before you have any saying on whether you want it or not and all of its knowledge, myths, moral and common sense are given and taken as facts. Then you play along in order to be accepted, in exchange of the identity the herd provides. Thats the path of least resistance and how we enter this world. When we come here, we´re all sheeps.
And your herd can make you or break you, in the same way parents can make you or break you.
So, what the herd can, or could do, is to attempt to do things right instead of attempting them wrong.
I´d rather have a herd that teaches truth / responsibility / owning yourself / love / the value of being awaken and gives you tools, rather than a herd that intentionally sedates you, keeps you down, distracted, scared; a herd that pushes you in the right direction, rather than a herd that only pushes so they can have your milk.
Then when / if you do the personal work needed to own yourself, you may awake in a better place, instead of awakening so far from good you wish you didnt open your eyes in the first place.
In short, the sense of safety and [the natural instinct of] going along with the masses can be used for good, as long as the masses are going in a good direction, and as long as illuminating and owning yourself is encouraged rather than shamed upon.
The herd itself isnt the problem.
While Im here Im going to grow a herd. Changing the world for better is not task for individuals. Everyone is going to reach for better, when everyone else is doing it, too.
Look at these two faces and answer the following questions:
Who of these dudes has 10 kids more than the other?
Who has read 10 times more books?
Who has more street´s smarts?
Who is more in contact with his emotions?
Who would you trust to carry a gun?
Who do you think is better with finances?
Who is better with large groups of people?
Who would make a better chef?
Who would make a better business owner?
Who of these two dudes is a painter?
Who is a celebrity?
Who is more submissive?
Who has a better sense of duty?
Who is better at magic?
Who eats more?
Who cries more?
Who is more stable?
Who is more empathetic?
Who is healthier?
Who has more to prove?
Who is an established architect?
Who is better with his hands?
Who has a bigger cock?
Assuming your gut works like mine you´ve been zigzagging from left to right and back. I think this stuff is biological, a screening-bias that is mostly right every time.
Each of these dudes can be *attractive* but they play on different ladders and at different strengths. The dude on the left has a high testosterone, manly face. The dude at the right has the opposite. Each face carries with a set of N traits. They will be attractive to people screening for such traits, like characters in a casting for a movie.
The dude at the left is more manly and will prevail when nature is though, when there´s competition and strong hierarchies. The dude at the right is less manly, and will survive when mental gymnastics are required.
When things are rough natural selection is more important. Having a lot of offspring is important. Sex is more important. Gender and differentiation are more important. You can picture the dude on the left fucking, fighting, breeding, owning.
When there are tons of resources and the species are safe, natural selecion ceases to work, sex is less important, having offspring is less important. Conservation of resources / inertia is whats important. You can picture the guy on the right daydreaming, playing some supportive role.
Another thing involved here is horizontality and verticality.
We associate all things vertical with “higher order” things, spirituality, intellect etc. Long faces look wiser. Think of every elf-looking character ever.
Then we associate all things horizontal with “earth-mundane” things, body, eating, fucking, fighting, etc. Wide faces look more earthgrounded. Look at every troll-dwarf character ever.
The guy on the left could play either the criminal gang boss or the tough cop who chases him.
The guy on the right could play the detail-obsessed serial killer, or the shy reporter investigating the story.
And that ends our facial-traits recognition session for today.
To indulge vs to control. Play vs work. Orientation vs constraints. Wishes vs whats possible. Wants vs price. Dream vs reality. True self vs whats expected of you.
Being yourself. Finding your inner truth. Feeling your true desires and expressing them. Releasing yourself out there. Treasuring what you value. Doing what pleases you. Adjusting your appearance to fit your own mood. Dancing like no body is watching. Perceiving the world from the lense of how it reacts to yourself. Letting the world do its thing. Lifestyle and spontaneity.
Doing what matters. Finding what works and what doesnt. Gathering techniques and skills to defeat and conquer. Gaining dominance out there. Conquering. Doing what´s right. Doing what you have to do because there´s no other choice. Dressing the t-shirt of your cause. Getting associated with similarly goal oriented pals. One for the team. Hard work and rewards.
Being yourself is a feminine principle. Its self centered. It places the self above of the world.
Do what matters is a masculine principle. Its externally centered. It places the world above of the self.
A person focusing on being themselves loses sight of whats important. Loses sight of the consequences of their behavior. Loses sight of what they actually DO. Loses sight of cause and effect.
A person focusing on doing what matters loses sight of the self. Loses sight of their own happiness. Loses sight of what they actually WANT. Loses sight of their individual, core identity.
So.
Be yourself, do what matters.
When you find your inner truth, desires, likes, ambitions, focus on what matters. What matters out there. When you do what matters out there, focus on who you are.
Make every action a bold, irreversible statement. And then take in every experience as a bold, irreversible growth.
This is your marriage with the universe.
Go into the experience naked, with your true self. Do what matters, do whats real, do the work. Then let the experience change you.
Convey who you are in every action, and then become what you do.
As a man, the moment you channel the “be yourself and screw the world”, you slide into either alpha´s or omega´s frame. The moment you do what matters it clears out that distinction. The moment you embrace the self, is the moment what you do starts to matter.
As a woman, the moment you channel the “do what matters, screw how I feel” the world opens up with all kind of new treasures, offers and possibilities. The moment you do what matters, the moment your true self starts to shine.
And this [click here!] is what I state I havent seen in the world.
Frankly, I havent even seen people aiming for that.
What I see is people facing relationships in terms of benefits. So the relationships are just means to get something. Its a business.
In business, the rule is that you get something valuable in exchange for something less valuable and thats how you make a profit. Thats how you make your happiness. Everything adds up to the price and you add your costs and margins all there. Then add some up percent so in the case the customer wants to negotiate, you can offer a discount while still making a margin. And since business are set in a marketplace, its a constant push pull with the prices going up and down and demand and competition and some business go bankrupt, just a few make it big and most just barely cover the costs.
The sex marketplace has the business model. Natural selection, hormones, competition, value, settling, switching. A great design by nature or whatever deity you decide to believe in. Awesome for evolution. How about relationships?
What I see out there is people treating their relationships with the business mentality.
People want the benefits associated with relationships, sex, company, love, family, stuff, getting their needs met. Avoiding loneliness and filling a void. In exchange of something. Its less about the relationship itself than its about all these aggregates. And each and every aggregate has a price point, a number.
Think of the shadows of gray here:
- I want to go to the game with you, I know you love that and I want to share it. Whats your fav team?
- OK… Im going to the game. But you have to come to see my concert. And learn the lyrics.
So that second line is great game right? most of the game stuff is about learning the business aspect of relationships. You can profit. I did. I do. But how about the relationship itself? beyond of the mutual exchange of benefits? Beyond the traffic of values?
What I see out there is that its never about the relationship itself, so it eventually deteriorates and becomes sick, but the parties dont want to quit it because of the pain of losing all these benefits. “Nobody to join me at the game/concert, and our shared assets, and I need the sex, I dont want to be alone, I dont want the change”. Or sometimes one of them just quits and steals all of the benefits, inducing bankrupcy in the other party.
You know that story.
So how many relationships out there without the business model?
My name is Yohami.
Im a Singer/Songwriter.
Im on my way to have fun. 
