Social Commentary

Somewhat less polished article than usual today... my computer's in the shop, so I'm having to put things together on a rather dated machine instead of my usual one.

A reader wrote in to give me a tongue lashing for being insecure, brainwashing men, and leading people astray - away from loving themselves, their soul mates, and God. Here's what he had to say:

“Hey Chase,

So I used to be on this site until I realized a few things. Firstly, you're a very insecure man who is brainwashing men into learning a 'skill' which they should not be learning. I believe there is a God-given person for anyone, and regardless of whether or not you think that is 'feel good nonsense' is up to you. A girl left you and because of that you felt like you needed to change. Ever think that maybe she just wasn't right for you? Ever think that you could find a girl who likes you for who you are, but you just got to be patient? Ever think that it's okay to be yourself and to want to be efficient and get things done fast only if you want to? Your website is based on complex logic-based ideological nonsense that appeals to vulnerable young and old men who have typically been through hard times with women and are looking for a solution. Sure you can learn how to make money, get the best body, etc.; we live in a progress-based society. On the other hand, when you are trying to teach people a skill, which is not yours or anyone else's right to teach, then that's crossing the line. Deep down, you know it's wrong, and despite the fact that it works (I can vouch for that), it's morally wrong. You don't need to sleep with women for them to stick around. Most of them will stick around, and you're right about that, but really think about what's the point of doing that. If a girl is meant for YOU then she will like YOU for the nerdy, efficient, intelligent, socially awkward person that you naturally are. SIMPLE. Chase, please give your head a shake, bro. I know what you're saying is true and works, I know if you get the girl to pay it works, I know chase frames work, etc. Please just take a moment and think 'Why would I want a girl who doesn't like me for who I am?' Don't fight your core self, try to change your voice, and who you are. Do it if you want, but the girl you end up with will like you for you. Marriage may not be a big deal to you, but it is a God-given way for 2 people who love each other to demonstrate that; you're just taking a completely logic-based approach, which is one that society tries to conform us into due to its progress-based nature, but if you know what's good for you, you'll take a moment and seriously rethink what you are doing, and get your insecurities sorted out, because you have some serious work to do my friend :).

All the best,
Former member”

I have a pretty good idea who this individual is, because he routinely comes on here leaving similar comments. If it's the person I think, he's a guy who was very religious, then decided he was going to learn how to be good with girls, then, before he could actually get any experience with women, decided that being good with girls was morally reprehensible and that he should go back to being very religious again. I've nothing against religious people personally, but flip-flopping is just annoying.

If there's a God, He's probably pretty annoyed with it too. God and I are both annoyed.

I'd take the time to respond point-by-point here - except I've already done that, in this article from two years ago: "Just Be Yourself: The Worst Dating Advice Known to Man." If you're curious about my response to the line of reasoning espoused in the above comment, just read that article - I wrote it specifically so I wouldn't have to keep repeating myself every time somebody decides to challenge why anyone needs to bother with self-improvement, dating advice, treating yourself as your own greatest project and investment, etc.

And the morality issue - "You know it's wrong to teach men about women!" - has been previously addressed here: "Is Seduction Wrong?"

(also worth adding, for clarity's sake - I started improving myself with women when I had almost zero prior success with women and was alone and friendless, not because a girl "had left me," although this does seem to be a common origin story for men in the dating advice niche; and I score 35% on OkCupid's "How Insecure Are You, Really... Test," which you can draw your own conclusions about)

Anyway, what I'm actually primarily interested in discussing here is the emotional reaction - why do people get upset and feel like they need to go on a crusade to silence you when they know you don't think as they do?

Why is it about other people's ideas that make them so... frightening? I mean, they're just ideas... right?

I'm going to take a bit of a tangent from the usual here to discuss the topic of time efficiency and ways that you can make your social life (and the rest of your life) much more efficient.

This article is in answer to K's comment here that asks:

“Hey Chase!

Thank you so much for this website. It is truthfully the only comprehensive "how to live life" site that takes a logical approach to everything. I especially enjoyed the "Are you smart post". The difference between hard working and smart is truly all important. It would be amazing if you could get a post up here about how to be incredibly time efficient, so that we can learn how to really maximize the effectiveness of our work.

Thanks again,

K”

K's referencing the article "Are You Smart? It Doesn't Much Matter Either Way," in which we examined some research done on children praised as "smart" compared to children praised as "hard working" from an early age. The findings were that the children praised as "smart" early on shied away from hard problems later in life out of fear of failing and proving themselves "not smart," while children praised as "hard working" early on dove into hard problems later in life in with zest to show how "hard working" they really were.

In this article, I want to turn the spotlight onto the topics of hard limits, autopilot, and also revisit some of what we discussed in the article on ego depletion - so we can talk about how one becomes truly time efficient.

In the article that poses (and answers) the question "how much do looks matter?," a commenter asked the following about having a devil may care attitude:

“I don't know if you've heard the quote:

“The attitude dictates that you don’t care whether she comes, stays, lays, or prays. I mean whatever happens, your toes are still tappin’. Now when you got that, then you have the attitude.”

But I'm aiming for a Devil May Care attitude. And I would appreciate some insight on your attitude as far as badboy/alpha/dominant.. Etc.

Since mindset effects your outlook which effects your actions I think it's something to definitely touch on.”

I referred him first to the relevant articles on this site for adopting the actions and behavior patterns of the cool, indomitable outsider that women adore:

• Why Girls Like Bad Boys

• How to Be an Alpha Male -- Without Becoming a Stereotype

• How to Be a Dominant Man: What You Didn't Know About the 'Winner Effect'

• How to Be Vulnerable, Enchanting, and Alluring to Women

• How to Be Smooth with Women (and Take More Lovers)

• How to Be Edgy (and Turn Women On)

... but what his question really seemed to be about was not actions, but mindsets; what does it feel like to be that devil-may-care guy... how do you think about things when you are this way... and how do you get to be this way in the first place?

This article's about that. It's about what it feels like to get an injection of attitude straight into the artery, and it's about how you go about getting that injection in the first place.

“Why don't people just give me money?”

That's what a friend of mine once lamented, frustrated at how hard a time he was having running business and making things work as well as he thought they should.

It stems from a mindset that most people have to some extent: X just happens to people. It's a focus on events.

Events are an easy thing for the human mind to seize on:

• Climbing Mt. Everest
• Diving in the Mediterranean
• Getting married on a hilltop
• Selling a business for millions of dollars
• Sleeping with some beautiful girl
• Becoming famous and getting on TV

Most people look at the people doing these things and say, “God, that person is lucky! Why can't I have that happen to ME?”

The hard thing to do though is the thing that's also the more correct thing, and the thing that actually works: focusing not on events, but on process, instead.

Note before you starting reading: This article is almost 10,000 words in length, and dives into a lot of material that goes beyond dating, women, seduction, and relationships. So, you may not want to start in on this one until you're in a more reflective mood, or have a good chunk of time to spend reading.

When talking about getting good with women, or about starting businesses, or learning or mastering just about anything, really, you will frequently see me discuss the importance of purpose.

Purpose drives you; it gives you momentum and wings; it aids you in accomplishing things that men more skilled than you or with more raw natural talent than you or even greater imaginations or intellect or willpower than you could never hope to achieve.

Purpose is the great equalizer.

I don't like going to deep into what purpose is though, because that's a complex topic. Everyone is so certain that he has a - or the - "purpose of life" all figured out, and the people standing on high yelling about purpose can be both some of the most inspiring and some of the most maddeningly frustrating people you will ever see or hear.

It's my belief, though, that the major crisis of the West has been its loss of purpose. With the withdraw of religion back into the inky depths of history, the old religions coming to be viewed as no more than quaint relics of a bygone age, Western man has found himself wondering what it is, exactly, that he's working for.

Without purpose, the good times seem like hollow indulgences, and the bad times well nigh unbearable. With purpose, though, the good times are meaningful, and the bad times more so.

So, since we've had a number of readers on here request it, and since it is a topic that influences you intangibly in everything you do - whether that be dating, relationships, business, some sport or art or hobby, or any and all other endeavors - let's have a look at purpose, and see if we can't boil purpose in life down to a few essential elements, like we like to do with everything else.

Last week, I wrote about what's wrong with dating in America. I wrote it after being troubled when reading about the latest round of pettiness erupting into a media firestorm because of the "battle of the sexes"; at tech convention PyCon, a female employee of email company SendGrid heard a couple of male employees of game developer PlayHaven making juvenile jokes about the words "dongle" and "forking," turned around, took their pictures, excoriated them online, and PlayHaven fired them.

After the resulting firestorm, centering on this individual who had a couple of men with families fired for whispering jokes to one another in a conference, SendGrid attracted a great deal of hostility from the developer community (in other words, its customer base), and consequently fired the picture-taker. (You can read the full article here, if interested.)

That got me thinking a lot about where all the virulence between the sexes in the West has come from recently. You don't see it a lot of other places in the world... just here. Like I talked about in the article on bitter women, I'm not really so certain there are that many truly terrible people out there, as much as it is that the Internet acts as an emotion amplifier and makes it seem so, with its text-only, subtext-free, tonality-free communication making everything seem so cut and dry, black and white, and frequently making everyone sound so certain, absolute, and polarizing.

But as I thought about it, I realized there was something else causing conflict between men and women, too: a product of a mix of the modern unisex workplace and social environment, and the Western ideal of independence, but not at all what any of the women (or men) struggling for women's rights ever expected - that "equality," at least as most people have fought for it for Western women, has really ended up meaning that women are now required not only to fight with other women for what they want, but to fight with men now too - and that men are required to fight them back.

I've been reading a lot of stuff lately about people frustrated with dating. It comes from both sides of the aisle: women who are frustrated that they simply can't find dateable men, and men who are frustrated that women are far too picky, and complaining there aren't any dateable men, when they seemingly just skip right over these all men who, on paper, meet all of those girls' supposed requirements.

It's interesting to read. I researched dating and romantic history quite heavily for the relationship book I was writing last year (that I've since put on hold - I'm not in a position to effectively market another book just yet), and while a lot of male-female complaints are as old as time itself, I can tell you that this one - that there just aren't any dateable men, and that the women themselves are far too picky - is one I haven't encountered in the literature prior to the advent of the modern dating and relationship system in the early 20th century.

It's a whole new flavor of disconcert and disbelief.

Thing is, whenever you see people in disbelief at their inability to do or get something, it's a blaringly loud sign of a flawed mental model. They've got something wrong - their expectations are off. Fantasy isn't jibing with reality.

And right now, when you look at how dating in America and dating in much of the West plays out, you're seeing this wide-eyed, confused disbelief from a large segment of both the male and the female dating populations.

You don't hear about it from middle-aged folks. You don't hear women over 40 complaining much how there are "no men to date" - even though women at that age have far fewer options than their younger, louder counterparts. You also don't hear men over 40 complaining that "women skim right past them."

So what's going on with the under-40 crowd that's got everybody so addled?