Over on his little chateau, otherwise known as a blog, the pick-up Heartiste Formerly Known as Roissy suggests a rather unusual role model for young and not-so-young men hoping to impress women with their alphaness: Chris Brown. Not for being a charismatic singer, but for that time he nearly beat Rihanna to death.
Oh, you don’t have to literally beat up women to be an alpha. Just work on making them uncomfortable and insecure.
Maxim #19: Making a woman feel a little emotional pain will reward you a thousandfold in returned physical pleasure.
You don’t have to be fists-of-fury Chris Brown to pick up a Rihanna and make her fall in deep, profound love with you, but don’t let the lesson of their relationship be lost on you. If you are a beta male — and odds are you are — you can superglue your relationship bond by instilling in your woman a calculated level of discomfort and insecurity. You won’t feel bad about this, because you will know that the discomfort you create is subconsciously DESIRED by your girl. Despite her outward appearance of frustration and timorous appeasement, you will know that inside, she is lit up like a vagina tree, with a squirting orgasm shooting out of the star on top.
In addition to everything else that is horribly wrong with this quote, let me just say that “lit up like a vagina tree” is not a phrase that I hope works its way into the vernacular.
So far, so good.
Yeah. I’m not an anarchist either, largely because I think groups of people end up naturally forming hierarchies. So I suspect that if we were to abolish the state, we just end up with people organizing another sort of hierarchy. I think that even in an anarchist society, you’d end up with something that is, in practice, a state, even if it wasn’t called that. (I should add that not all hierarchies are equal. I’m not dismissing any ideas anarchists might have about how to organize a society simply because I think that they end up with a de facto state. Like Ozy said, it could well be a more just and democratic state. And that’s something I’d certainly like to work towards.)
But I’d certainly rather live in an anarchist society than in Steele’s Randroid dystopia or Om Nom’s Stalinist Robot Apocalypse. (Om Nom, dude, wtf is wrong with you?)
I also think there’s a difference between power freely given and consensually exercised and, say, a state or corporation or big NGO. Many of the latter have done good things, and for the moment we can’t get by without them, but they also have a ton of potential to do harm.
That’s massively different from, say, the tendency of my friendships to fall into a leader/second-in-command model with me as the second-in-command, or designating someone the point person for a project because they have the most time/interest/skills, or even the Manboobz community’s relationship with David (since we can leave en masse at any time if we get upset with his policies).
Selfishness isn’t an intrinsic personality trait unless you want it to be. You can’t choose your immutable traits, like blood type, but it’s certainly within your power to not be an asshole towards other people.
@blackbloc
i know aworld is familiar with the culture, so i’m pretty sure he means stuff that’s not post-scarcity. i can’t really think of any.
I’m still a transhumanist who doesn’t advocate for a robot apocalypse, I just want to put my brain in a starship, and it makes me sad that Om Nom is making the rest of us look bad.
Altruism as evolutionary trait:
http://www.medicaldaily.com/news/20120814/11497/bullying-stand-up-natural-selection-evolution-darwin.htm
@Sharculese & BlackBlock
I had something on my goodreads list that was a series about an anarchist revolution in a cyberpunk society, I forgot the title though.
Excuse me? I’m actually chortling as I write this. You don’t think power is intrinsic to humans? Silly, silly feminists. Not a single culture has arisen without some form of institutional government. And these peoples didn’t just “have” that government – some group seized power, and codified it institutionally.
Even in smaller situations, people group themselves hierarchically based on charisma, perceived status, or any number of other factors. If power really corrupted, that would be a sad world indeed – every single social group would have its corrupt leaders.
I can’t even call you vile; you’re merely stupid.
@ Effie – Randroids get around this one by redefinition. For most of us, ‘selfishness’ means unconscionably or unethically self- regarding. If I’m hungry and make myself a sandwich, that’s probably not selfish; but if there’s a plate of sandwiches and I take a second one while there are still people who haven’t eaten yet, that’s selfish.
For Randroids, anything you do for yourself is selfish. Thus, it is practically impossible under their definition to be unselfish, which is how they’re able to say ‘everybody is selfish’ with a straight face.
Effie: Actually, there’s some evidence that one’s level of disagreeableness is genetic and influenced by childhood environment, iirc.
Steele, La Commune Parisienne would beg to differ with you on the whole institutional government thing.
Steele, just because you haven’t evolved past bashing a woman over the head and dragging her to your cave, or beating smaller fellow tribesmen with your club when they try to eat something you think is yours, doesn’t mean the rest of us are still back there with you.
I chortled as I read that. Thanks mikey!
Steele: Yes, power corrupts (although not everyone, and rarely absolutely), and yes, power is an inherent feature of human social interaction. Both of those facts are true. The universe is not required to arrange itself to please you or to make people happy.
Ozymandias,
Is that like how conservatives have larger fear centers and lower IQs so they tend to be bigots?
http://news.yahoo.com/low-iq-conservative-beliefs-linked-prejudice-180403506.html
@ Shadow “I chortled as I read that. Thanks mikey!”
I guffawed. Others may have tittered.
A visual for your chortle
http://i204.photobucket.com/albums/bb143/loserbrett/Chortle/Chortle.jpg
CLARIFICATION: I do believe that power often corrupts. I merely don’t believe it always does, particularly if the incentives (that is, the potential consequences and likelihood of being caught) to not be corrupt are high enough. These incentives are provided by a government.
(I must again credit OOF for this line of thinking, which I have paraphrased).
How’s your IT/exec job Varpole? Figure out what an IP address is yet?
Christ on a Shetland pony, Steele, would you please form an original thought?
cool, dude, keep think it’s clever that youve absorbed a bunch of vague incoherent generalities. your ability to repeat trite nostrums on demand knows no match.
and yet within two days you be flipping the fuck out about how vile and devious you are because you have the attention span of a goldfish and an endless capacity for acting like a spoiled baby
*vile and devious we are
Steele, Paris Commune, wiki it.
@ Steele “I merely don’t believe it always does, particularly if the incentives (that is, the potential consequences and likelihood of being caught)”
That’s a disincentive, not an incentive, An incentive would be some sort of reward for being uncorrupt, If you’re discouraging corruption with bribery, then your mangling English even more than usual.
PS – Do you sockpuppet on OOF too?
we get it, you can’t think for yourself and have to get your opinions from a message board. go back to your cubicle, office drone.