by @anarchyroll
7/20/2014
Learning how to talk to women in bars and nightclubs for the sole purpose of having casual/promiscuous sex is not what one would call the traditional road to enlightenment and inner peace. The Game by Neil Strauss is not a personal development/self-help book. It is an entertaining non fiction story intertwined with a how to manual of how to become a more socially suave man. Many women think of this book and other “seduction” manuals and are offended at the concept and existence of such material. The seduction community has some message board posts that can be considered the Rosetta Stone of internet trolling. However, without The Game I never would have become a well read person, and never would have been able to look beyond the stigma of consuming personal development/self-help materials.
I was never taught how to talk to women, or how to talk to girls for that matter. I was socially conditioned during my youth of watching television to look at women as either objects or villains. Pamela Anderson and pro wrestling provided me an education of women that I was too afraid to learn from first hand experience. Embarrassment and looking dumb in public settings while interacting with women is often too much for the male ego to bear.
There are plenty of men out there who when it comes every level of interacting with women are natural(s). They are the exception, not the rule. The inability and/or unwillingness most men have push through the pain of getting to the other side of their comfort zone, is much more of a psychological/medical condition that most people would give it credit for. The genuine emotional and mental pain most men experience at just the thought of failing at socializing with the opposite sex is hard to put into words. To imply one needs to simply man up, is akin to telling clinically diagnosed psychotics to just stop being crazy.
My inability and ignorance with the opposite sex led to an uncountable number of panic attacks, emotional breakdowns/meltdowns, and repeated diversions of time, concentration, and effort in the direction of my life’s purpose.
In the tradition of the double-edged sword, being introduced to The Game eventually led to me to reading other self-help books as well as the personal development and human potential movements. I discovered both after consuming so much social dynamics and pick up artist material, that I realized the hole I was trying to fill inside of myself was deeper and more profound than a hook up or series of hook ups could fill.
But I never would have gotten to personal development without The Game. The social stigma that pick up artists face is the same that self-help books have. That something is unnatural or wrong about both the information and the people who consume/apply the material(s). I thought self-help was stupid and to consume that knowledge meant that I was weak, defective, and a failure of a human being. I thought having to read a book about how to meet women meant that I was a failure as a man.
The real failure is in knowing one is not living their life the way they want to and/or feel they should and continuing to live that way rather than seeking help in the knowledge of books or mentors. Although we would all prefer to be perfect inside and out, part of the human condition is the inadequacies we have as people internally and/or externally. I am happy that my decision to face rather than deny my failures as a social being as a gateway to address the rest of my deficiencies at both the deep and shallow levels.
And it’s a fun book to read.
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