Just a warning, this is going to be a long post, and also all over the place. Humor me. My brain is all over the place tonight.
TL;DR version: Thedude went and got a burrito, some shit happened, had an epiphany. Red-Pill= dudes improving their lives. Objectivism= dudes improving their lives. Same thing.
Long version: I've read several threads on the forums over the last year or two where Ayn Rand and her philosophy of Objectivism were attacked or trivialized, and I never really understood why. Aside from the fact that it's incomplete as far as philosophies go and stands at odds with most classical and established philosophies, it's still very much in line with many of the red-pill beliefs and tenets that I'd say most of us hold close to our hearts.
I remember reading The Fountainhead in high school and loving it. I'd re-read the book throughout the years and it actually helped me keep my focus and dedication to my career. I related to Roark and his steely, stoic nature and the way he stands up against the conventional pillars of society to follow his heart and stay true to himself.
Then, all of a sudden, in my 20s it became un-cool to like The Fountainhead or Ayn Rand. She was seen as a crackpot, idealist, hopelessly delusional, immoral. If it somehow came up in conversation, and I showed my affinity for the book, it was usually met with eye-rolling and some sort of comment, "Oh, you're one of THOSE people..."
Some incidents tonight got me thinking about the forum, about seeing life through a red-pill lens, and about Objectivism.
I was getting a burrito 10 minutes south of my apartment. While certainly not a terrible neighborhood, let's just say it's very ethnically diverse and robbery/assault incidents aren't uncommon. I'm the only white dude in the place.
I order my food to go and there's this hood rat walking in, blabbering loud as can be on her cell phone. By her conversation, she's talking to some dude she doesn't remember and he doesn't remember her, but she got his number somewhere and wants to hang out. I hear the Mexicans start talking shit about her in Spanish, I keep hearing "La pinche negra fea". She orders some food, it arrives, and she starts making a scene about how she ordered CHEESE flautas, not CHICKEN flautas. Now, I heard her order the chicken flautas. Now she wants them to make her CHEESE flautas. So the waiter takes them back and she starts protesting, "Now wait a minute! If you just gonna throw them away I'll eat them too while you make me the CHEESE ones! Don't you go throw those away n waste em! I'll EAT them!". Oldest scam in the book, and everyone knew it. The waiter looks at her like he's about to murder her and says, "No we gonna make you what you want." and takes her food away. The girl stands up and starts addressing the room, a room full of latinos glaring at her, and me; "Now thats just crazy, they gonna throw em away! Sheeit I TOLD the guy I'd eat em while they make me my order CORRECT." The room is dead silent.
Then a few minutes later, I'm spacing out the window and this big motherfucker crosses the street, he's about 10 feet outside the window and points at me and starts making a "Come here" hand gesture. I look at him like he's crazy and shake my head. His face is fully tatted, he's got full sleeves, he's wearing a huge jersey and shorts sagging down to his shins. He's a caricature of a gang member.
He walks into the restaurant and I put my phone in my pocket and pull my chair out so I'm facing the room, ready to get out of my seat. My body's tensed up like a rubber band, I figure I can go for his throat in a quick motion if I have to and get the hell out, or die trying anyway. He walks by me, high on some shit and says, "SORRY MAN". I look him in the eye and say, "Hey, it's cool." He sits down and now the poor latinos have to deal with him, and he's blabbering his bullshit. I get my food and leave.
As I walked out, my thoughts were different than they would have been before I got into this whole red pill/PUA nonsense. Before I would have felt some animosity to the hood rat and the gangster, but I didn't tonight. Part of me even felt sympathetic. Why?
I broke down my emotions as follows:
Game/red-pill wisdom teaches you to
Maximize your enabling factors
and
Minimize your limiting factors
That hood rat? I guarantee you everywhere she goes, every goddamn thing is a struggle. She gets through this world trying to hustle everyone, whether she's getting a burrito, riding the bus, getting new clothes, or trying to land a man. Pretty shitty existence. It's a stark contrast against the fucking awesome life I and most of the guys on the forum lead.
That gangster? I guarantee you everywhere he goes, every goddamn thing is a struggle. Think he'll ever get a job with a fully tatted face? Ever have a decent relationship? Think he'll ever be able to quit that lifestyle if one day he's had enough? It's a stark contrast against the fucking awesome life I and most of the guys on the forum lead.
That's sad to me, even if these limiting factors are self-inflicted.
Enabling factors are things like being tall, having money, being confident, having a loud, deep voice, dressing well, being in shape, etc etc etc. These are things that get you jobs, get you paid more, get you laid, open doors, build friendships. As many of you, I spend most of every day either working on these things or at least THINKING about them.
Limiting factors would be things like being short, having bad posture, being weak, being afraid of women, being needy, etc. We spend a lot of time identifying these traits and devising methods of MINIMIZING their impact, or changing them outright. Can you imagine adding more limiting factors to your life intentionally? Going out and tatting up your face? Wearing ridiculously baggy clothing?
Red pill culture, as best I can summarize, is a culture based on each man maximizing his enabling factors and minimizing his limiting factors to create the richest, happiest, and most fulfilling life he can. It's a philosophy of selfishness, not materialistic selfishness but TRUE selfishness; a focus on the self and becoming a more realized man. To me, that sounds a whole hell of a lot like Objectivism.
Per wikipedia:
Sounds pretty familiar to me. I think people like to tear down Objectivism for two reasons:
1) it's idealistic beyond realistic expectation
2) it promotes the concept of heroes
People hate heroes. They love to tear them down, but they need them. Myself, I love heroic themes. I've always had a fascination with Greek and Norse mythology and been a fan of Beethoven and Liszt, who both wrote incredibly heroic themes.
People hate heroes because they rise above the mediocrity, the self-doubt, and the insecurity that the vast majority of the populace exhibit and live by on a regular basis. Look at how people tear down bodybuilders, weightlifters, womanizers, and other high profile alpha males. It only makes sense that if people tear down and publicly trash men that achieve greatness, that they would also tear down and publicly trash a philosophy that PROMOTES achieving that greatness.
Both Red-pill and Objectivism prescribe the Greater Life, the Genuine Life, the Life Realized. To me they are one and the same.
TL;DR version: Thedude went and got a burrito, some shit happened, had an epiphany. Red-Pill= dudes improving their lives. Objectivism= dudes improving their lives. Same thing.
Long version: I've read several threads on the forums over the last year or two where Ayn Rand and her philosophy of Objectivism were attacked or trivialized, and I never really understood why. Aside from the fact that it's incomplete as far as philosophies go and stands at odds with most classical and established philosophies, it's still very much in line with many of the red-pill beliefs and tenets that I'd say most of us hold close to our hearts.
I remember reading The Fountainhead in high school and loving it. I'd re-read the book throughout the years and it actually helped me keep my focus and dedication to my career. I related to Roark and his steely, stoic nature and the way he stands up against the conventional pillars of society to follow his heart and stay true to himself.
Then, all of a sudden, in my 20s it became un-cool to like The Fountainhead or Ayn Rand. She was seen as a crackpot, idealist, hopelessly delusional, immoral. If it somehow came up in conversation, and I showed my affinity for the book, it was usually met with eye-rolling and some sort of comment, "Oh, you're one of THOSE people..."
Some incidents tonight got me thinking about the forum, about seeing life through a red-pill lens, and about Objectivism.
I was getting a burrito 10 minutes south of my apartment. While certainly not a terrible neighborhood, let's just say it's very ethnically diverse and robbery/assault incidents aren't uncommon. I'm the only white dude in the place.
I order my food to go and there's this hood rat walking in, blabbering loud as can be on her cell phone. By her conversation, she's talking to some dude she doesn't remember and he doesn't remember her, but she got his number somewhere and wants to hang out. I hear the Mexicans start talking shit about her in Spanish, I keep hearing "La pinche negra fea". She orders some food, it arrives, and she starts making a scene about how she ordered CHEESE flautas, not CHICKEN flautas. Now, I heard her order the chicken flautas. Now she wants them to make her CHEESE flautas. So the waiter takes them back and she starts protesting, "Now wait a minute! If you just gonna throw them away I'll eat them too while you make me the CHEESE ones! Don't you go throw those away n waste em! I'll EAT them!". Oldest scam in the book, and everyone knew it. The waiter looks at her like he's about to murder her and says, "No we gonna make you what you want." and takes her food away. The girl stands up and starts addressing the room, a room full of latinos glaring at her, and me; "Now thats just crazy, they gonna throw em away! Sheeit I TOLD the guy I'd eat em while they make me my order CORRECT." The room is dead silent.
Then a few minutes later, I'm spacing out the window and this big motherfucker crosses the street, he's about 10 feet outside the window and points at me and starts making a "Come here" hand gesture. I look at him like he's crazy and shake my head. His face is fully tatted, he's got full sleeves, he's wearing a huge jersey and shorts sagging down to his shins. He's a caricature of a gang member.
He walks into the restaurant and I put my phone in my pocket and pull my chair out so I'm facing the room, ready to get out of my seat. My body's tensed up like a rubber band, I figure I can go for his throat in a quick motion if I have to and get the hell out, or die trying anyway. He walks by me, high on some shit and says, "SORRY MAN". I look him in the eye and say, "Hey, it's cool." He sits down and now the poor latinos have to deal with him, and he's blabbering his bullshit. I get my food and leave.
As I walked out, my thoughts were different than they would have been before I got into this whole red pill/PUA nonsense. Before I would have felt some animosity to the hood rat and the gangster, but I didn't tonight. Part of me even felt sympathetic. Why?
I broke down my emotions as follows:
Game/red-pill wisdom teaches you to
Maximize your enabling factors
and
Minimize your limiting factors
That hood rat? I guarantee you everywhere she goes, every goddamn thing is a struggle. She gets through this world trying to hustle everyone, whether she's getting a burrito, riding the bus, getting new clothes, or trying to land a man. Pretty shitty existence. It's a stark contrast against the fucking awesome life I and most of the guys on the forum lead.
That gangster? I guarantee you everywhere he goes, every goddamn thing is a struggle. Think he'll ever get a job with a fully tatted face? Ever have a decent relationship? Think he'll ever be able to quit that lifestyle if one day he's had enough? It's a stark contrast against the fucking awesome life I and most of the guys on the forum lead.
That's sad to me, even if these limiting factors are self-inflicted.
Enabling factors are things like being tall, having money, being confident, having a loud, deep voice, dressing well, being in shape, etc etc etc. These are things that get you jobs, get you paid more, get you laid, open doors, build friendships. As many of you, I spend most of every day either working on these things or at least THINKING about them.
Limiting factors would be things like being short, having bad posture, being weak, being afraid of women, being needy, etc. We spend a lot of time identifying these traits and devising methods of MINIMIZING their impact, or changing them outright. Can you imagine adding more limiting factors to your life intentionally? Going out and tatting up your face? Wearing ridiculously baggy clothing?
Red pill culture, as best I can summarize, is a culture based on each man maximizing his enabling factors and minimizing his limiting factors to create the richest, happiest, and most fulfilling life he can. It's a philosophy of selfishness, not materialistic selfishness but TRUE selfishness; a focus on the self and becoming a more realized man. To me, that sounds a whole hell of a lot like Objectivism.
Per wikipedia:
Quote:Quote:
Objectivism's central tenets are that reality exists independent of consciousness, that human beings have direct contact with reality through sense perception, that one can attain objective knowledge from perception through the process of concept formation and inductive logic, that the proper moral purpose of one's life is the pursuit of one's own happiness (or rational self-interest), that the only social system consistent with this morality is full respect for individual rights embodied in laissez-faire capitalism, and that the role of art in human life is to transform humans' metaphysical ideas by selective reproduction of reality into a physical form—a work of art—that one can comprehend and to which one can respond emotionally.[citation needed]
Sounds pretty familiar to me. I think people like to tear down Objectivism for two reasons:
1) it's idealistic beyond realistic expectation
2) it promotes the concept of heroes
People hate heroes. They love to tear them down, but they need them. Myself, I love heroic themes. I've always had a fascination with Greek and Norse mythology and been a fan of Beethoven and Liszt, who both wrote incredibly heroic themes.
People hate heroes because they rise above the mediocrity, the self-doubt, and the insecurity that the vast majority of the populace exhibit and live by on a regular basis. Look at how people tear down bodybuilders, weightlifters, womanizers, and other high profile alpha males. It only makes sense that if people tear down and publicly trash men that achieve greatness, that they would also tear down and publicly trash a philosophy that PROMOTES achieving that greatness.
Both Red-pill and Objectivism prescribe the Greater Life, the Genuine Life, the Life Realized. To me they are one and the same.