Self-Transformation & Build A Better You.

luka

Well-known member
I'm not making an argument for pick up artists or Jordan Peterson per se, just the notion that it should be possible, if you so desire, to change. To break free of bad habits or inculcate good habits. To make better decisions. To take better care of yourself. To do more of the things you have identified as being good for you and fewer of the things you deem bad for you. To identify the forces which are preventing you from taking the actions you wish to take, and defeating them, in violent hand to hand combat.
 

luka

Well-known member
I'm not making an argument for pick up artists or Jordan Peterson per se, just the notion that it should be possible, if you so desire, to change. To break free of bad habits or inculcate good habits. To make better decisions. To take better care of yourself. To do more of the things you have identified as being good for you and fewer of the things you deem bad for you. To identify the forces which are preventing you from taking the actions you wish to take, and defeating them, in violent hand to hand combat.

This to reassure John who I'm sure thinks I'm much more wicked than I actually am
 

poetix

we murder to dissect
If PUA stuff actually "worked", i.e. if there were social hacks that could reliably move another person from a state of disinterest in one's person, through to a state of strong sexual interest in one's person, all the way through to their motivation to have sex with you significantly outweighing their motivations not to, that would be an extraordinary thing to learn about people, I think. Depressing, really: it would mean that human beings were a lot less complex and unpredictable than I tend to think they are, although theory of mind has never been my strong suit.

There's an incidental truth hidden away in the PUA literature, which is that "inner game" is key: really all the "moves", and all the bullshit rationales for why those moves "work", are just supporting infrastructure for an underlying belief that this social interaction, this complex dance, might work out for you. And having that belief - not certainty, just a sense that you're not predestined to rejection - actually is useful, if it frees you up to engage fearlessly and openly, without disguising your desires from yourself or the other person because you're convinced the only possible way they could be viewed is with disgust and horror. But I think in the case of PUA as a movement, the scaffolding more often than not obstructs the process of personal growth it's supposed to enable. People end up fixated on technique, and on the promise that the technique will get them the results they want. They don't see it as a mind game they're primarily playing with themselves, to get out of a slump of despair and self-loathing.
 

poetix

we murder to dissect
A lot of self-improvement I think is like that. There's some practice that's meant to serve as scaffolding for change at a deeper level. So you start with a premise like "read one classic work of Great Literature a week, it will improve your erudition and make you more cultured and interesting", and actually it's getting into the habit of sitting down and paying proper attention to a book that activates your mental ability to concentrate and reflect on things that aren't in your immediate environment, and it's not the improving power of Great Literature that's done that to you at all, it's gaining the ability to pay attention in that particular way.
 

poetix

we murder to dissect
What happens to Rita in Educating Rita isn't that she acquires a lot of knowledge from books, it's that she finds a space within herself where learning can happen, a space which nothing in her life up to that point has even acknowledged exists.
 

poetix

we murder to dissect
The alchemist in Philip Pullman's latest says something like this: if people think I'm engaged on this fool's errand of turning lead into gold, they won't enquire too deeply into the highly heretical chemistry experiments I'm actually doing.
 

poetix

we murder to dissect
I've heard it said incidentally that the incel movement was initially composed primarily of people who'd got into PUA and found it hadn't "worked" for them - who'd got stuck at the level of technique, been predictably disappointed by the results, and relapsed even more deeply into the attitude of despair and self-disgust they started out with. That can be a risk with self-improvement kicks. If you throw yourself into one hard, and then bounce off it, you may end up even more convinced before of your hardened and recidivist unimprovability.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
I've heard it said incidentally that the incel movement was initially composed primarily of people who'd got into PUA and found it hadn't "worked" for them - who'd got stuck at the level of technique, been predictably disappointed by the results, and relapsed even more deeply into the attitude of despair and self-disgust they started out with. That can be a risk with self-improvement kicks. If you throw yourself into one hard, and then bounce off it, you may end up even more convinced before of your hardened and recidivist unimprovability.

That's quite a male way of carrying on.
 

luka

Well-known member
One thing to aim for might be, how to enjoy lazy useless slob time with a clear conscience.
 

entertainment

Well-known member
it's interesting the thing you said about the left ceding the territory, Luka. Not this particular territory but the power dynamics of it. Do you have more on that? I've got my notebook out.
 

entertainment

Well-known member
Is the left doomed to subordination in this battle, not able to move around with sovereignity but predestined to position itself in opposition to wherever right goes?

Is the left afraid to fight because they have more to lose?
 

luka

Well-known member
The immediate context here is, as I say, poetix and his fussing over the magical, the mystical, the occult, the intuitive, the imaginal, the message from beyond, spirits, fairies, elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves, goddesses with pale ankles, demons, daimons, Wizards, warlocks, spooks and holy ghosts.

He believes in something he calls 'the rationalist.' It's a a kind of robot that is incapable of mistakes.

He's always been a bit like that but it's been at the forefront of his mind recently because Josef K, with tentative support from Nina Power, has been summoning the ancient spirits of evil, from the dusty, old grimoires of Evola and the traditionalists.

So the fear is that anything which does not submit to the strictures of the infallible robot is liable to end up as josef k.

I think, I think, the robot is presumed to be innately left wing, although right wing 'rationalists' would beg to differ.

You'd think they could settle their disputes rationally but for some reason that doesn't seem to be possible.

Another friend of mine, znore, who writes the grapejuice blog, is concerned with making an argument for a left irrationality, leaning heavily on Blake and Finegans Wake. Because, like me, and this is how we became friends, he likes drugs and poetry and messages from beyond and disincarnate intelligences and mythological systems and etc and doesn't see any reason why the nazis should get them all to themselves.

https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com

He's very aware of the problem, more so than most, because about 90% of the circle of bloggers he was initially involved with turned into nazis during this recent ideological upheaval (which is so huge, and has transformed the landscape so utterly I can't think of a precedent for it in my lifetime) He wrote a piece I like on the frog god Kek and the birth of the alt right.

So the danger is real, real enough, for whatever reason, but it may be that the answer is to map the territory better, with the dangers signposted, rather than declaring it forbidden ground and surrendering it to the enemy.

My strong belief is that the nazism is a retreat from the territory proper, or it corresponds to a reterritorialisation. Seeking safety in a renewed drawing of boundaries, a rigidified, defined self, etc etc etc. It's fear in the face of the nameless ones, the oozing morass, the void, the howling abyss.... It's not a feature of that place, rather it is a common reaction to being exposed to it.

That's the context I had in mind, ( & deliberately tugging poetix pigtails in the hope of making him squeal in indignation.)
 
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luka

Well-known member
I'm not remotely political myself I just believe in choosing a side. I don't believe in a non partisan position. It's a war universe, as Burroughs says.
 

luka

Well-known member
I don't think I've answered your question but that's because I don't think I understand it
 

pattycakes_

Can turn naughty
Does Burroughs say anything about the sides being orchestrated to trap people into believing in fictions to keep them busy and divided?
 
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