(04-10-2015 05:27 PM)AnonymousBosch Wrote: The beauty of The Last Psychiatrist is that his essays lure you in with the promise of mockery of easy targets, but his train of thought eventually leads you to having to confront your own failings. You end up with a better understanding of yourself for having read him.
As such, be very wary of sharing him with Blue Pill Thinkers. They're not ready for that level of self-knowledge. I've had a couple of Intelligent-Persona Girls in my circle who have flipped their shit after they've read articles I recommended, in classic SJW Narcissistic Fury fashion.
Bosch, I could tell you so many stories about that - but I'll only pick one.
I'm a member in good standing of a philosophy message board. (I won't name which one, but internet savvy people can quickly find out which.) The board's major purposes are: philosophy, self-knowledge, emotional connection / empathy, and confronting your childhood wounds (ideally, though not necessarily, through therapy).
I had only been a member of the RVF forum for about six weeks, and had only seriously begun processing Red Pill ideas for about ten weeks, when I attended my first Meet-Up Group devoted to this philosophy message board. During the second meeting, eight members (led by one member in particular) spent about 90 minutes telling me that my communication style was "too dominating", and that I didn't seem "very empathetic".
About thirty minutes after this, the subject changed, and I mentioned Roosh's three-circle venn diagram in this article.
http://www.rooshv.com/how-to-be-a-great-man
I set up my argument by first saying, "You can't use an excess of money and six-pack abs to make up for a lack of philosophy." (Everyone nods.) But then I continued, "You also cannot use an excess of philosophy to make up for a lack of six-pack abs and money." (Everyone stops nodding; place goes dead-silent.)
Except one guy, (who had spent
hours repeatedly hammering me on my lack-of-empathy), says, "You don't need money and six-packs abs to attract a virtuous woman."
To which I replied, with confident body-language and a matter-of-fact tone, "Philosophically, what you say is 100% true - but you're not empathizing with a virtuous woman's desire for six pack abs and money."
He did a
full-body shudder - such that his shoulders moved five inches, while immediately breaking eye contact by jerking his head downwards and to the left, while also involuntarily moving five inches to his left (away from me).
After that, I wasn't invited back.
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Multiple TLP articles made me able to see through the group's flawed arguments, but this one is my favorite. (Especially because the philosophy group is so focused on childhood wounds, and (ostensibly) learning to get over them.)
http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2012/06/a..._look.html
Quote:Say you yell every day at an/your eight year old girl for sloppy homework, admittedly a terrible thing to do but not uncommon, and eventually she thinks, "I'm terrible at everything" and gives up, so the standard interpretation of this is that she has lost self-confidence, she's been demoralized, and case by case you may be right, but there's another possibility which you should consider: she chooses to focus on "I'm terrible at everything" so that she can give up. "If I agree to hate myself I only need a 60? I'll be done in 10 minutes. "
It is precisely at this instant that a parent fails or succeeds, i.e. fails: do they teach the kid to prefer (find reinforcement in) the drudgery of boring, difficult work with little daily evidence of improvement, or do they teach the kid to prefer (find reinforcement in) about 20 minutes of sobbing hysterically and then off to Facebook and a sandwich? Each human being is only able to learn to prefer one of those at a time. Which one does the parent incentivize?
If you read this as laziness you have utterly missed the point. It's not laziness, because you're still working hard, but you are working purposelessly on purpose. The goal of your work is to be done the work, not to be better at work.
For a great many people this leads to an unconscious, default hierarchy in the mind, I'm not an epidemiologist but you got it in you sometime between the ages of 5 and 10:
<doing awesome>
is better than
<feeling terrible about yourself>
is better than
<the mental work of change>
You should memorize this, it is running your life. "I'm constantly thinking about ways to improve myself." No, you're gunning the engine while you're up on blocks. Obsessing and ruminating is a skill at which we are all tremendously accomplished, and admittedly that feels like mental work because it's exhausting and unrewarding, but you can no more ruminate your way through a life crisis than a differential equation. So the parents unknowingly teach you to opt for B, and after a few years of childhood insecurity, you'll choose the Blue Pill and begin the dreaming: someday and someplace you'll show someone how great you somehow are. And after a few months with that someone they will eventually turn to you, look deep into your eyes, and say, "look, I don't have a swimming pool, but if I did I'd drown myself in it. Holy Christ are you toxic."
"Well, my parents were really strict, they made me--" Keep telling yourself that. Chances are if your parents are between 50 and 90 they were simply terrible. Great expectations; epic fail. Your parents were dutifully strict about their arbitrary and expedient rules, not about making you a better person. "Clean your plate! Go to college!" Words fail me. They weren't tough, they were rigidly self-aggrandizing. "They made me practice piano an hour every day!" as if the fact of practice was the whole point; what they did not teach you is to try and sound better every practice. They meant well, they loved you, but the generation that invented grade inflation is not also going to know about self-monitoring and paedeia, which is roughly translated, "making yourself better at piano."
"You don't know how hard it is to raise kids," says someone whose main cultural influence in life was the Beatles. The fact that you will inevitably fail in creating Superman is not a reason not to try. Oh: I bet I know what you chose when you were 8.
The mistake is in thinking that misery and self-loathing are the "bad" things you are trying to get away from with Ambien and Abilify or drinking or therapy or whatever, but you have this completely backwards. Self-loathing is the defense against change, self-loathing is preferable to <mental work.> You choose misery so that nothing changes, and the Ambien and the drinking and the therapy placate the misery so that you can go on not changing. That's why when you look in the mirror and don't like what you see, you don't immediately crank out 30 pushups, you open a bag of chips. You don't even try, you only plan to try. The appearance of mental work, aka masturbation. The goal of your ego is not to change, but what you don't realize is that time is moving on regardless.
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TLP's articles also made me realize, "Dude. You can read these articles at breakneck speed, instantly internalize them -
even though they make you realize that you've wasted your entire life from ages 21 to 38 - and instantly change your habits.
But your body doesn't make other people think you're strong at all, and you've never taken a punch to the face! Either learn to box within 18 months, or stop whining that no one respects you."