mASF post by "finalD"
posted on: mASF forum: Advanced Discussion, May 5, 2005spirit wrote in news:[email protected]:
>
> In some ways the only way you may 'get' this is by getting out in the
> field more and paying attention -
Agreed (of course) but your post, and the previous ones "from Mars," are
turning out to be kind of eye-opening for me. I guess the concept that
you mentioned, of "paying attention" isn't something I've ever quite
mastered. Or even really known existed, until now. I mean, I know that
such-and-such is going on at such-and-such a location (this bar is
quiet, that one doesn't have couches, the other one has drag-queen shows
every Thursday ...) but essentially I've always thought of those things
as obstacles that will throw themselves in your way at some point in the
evening. So, I hadn't been PLANNING on defusing or avoiding those
obstacles, but instead waiting for them to become an issue and then
HOPING I would know the appropriate response. This is, well, just plain
stupid. Particularly since many of those characteristics might be
considered not obstacles, but opportunities, if used in the proper
manner.
When I say it like that, it really seems obvious. But what won't be
obvious, is starting to develop a mental database of my surroundings,
and adding to it, and trying to "memorize" all these details up to a
point that it becomes natural to simply "absorb" them without
proactively, by rote, memorizing things. In addition, I haven't really
stumbled on the ways to defuse other sorts of obstacle / opportunity /
setting-characteristics that you can't experience in advance --
different group arrangements and numbers, different weather conditions,
your car breaking down :P, ripping your pants, ripping HER pants :),
changing cities to a place you don't know at all, etc. Those are
specific issues that I guess I need to begin to PAY ATTENTION TO in a
new and useful manner.
The whole thing starts to feel more and more like a lion or buffalo
hunt. It isn't all about courage or about having bigger weapons, if you
genuinely are hunting like the native tribesman. Rather, it's about
communicating with your surroundings. "OK, there's a tree that would be
easy to zip up into and fend off an attacking lion; OK, this turn here
is somewhere that I can see my partner who is beating the bush with me
and he and I can watch one another's backs; OK, there is a bird that
sounds too much like the emergency signal that the elders are supposed
to give when we all have to sprint for cover, so I gotta remember that
the elders only coo twice while the bird coos once." Etc. Those details
are "logistics" in the base, tactical sense. And they're the sort of
thing I never adopted into my game plan in any manner.
Can't really imagine why not. I guess I simply have a bit of Asperger's-
style nerdiness. At least this gives me something to LOOK FOR when I go
out, some manner of observing that isn't simply accepting a variety of
chaotic or cacophonic stimuli into my sensory openings but is instead a
variety of data that I can somehow tabulate and eventually (I hope) use.
Your second post, mostly about "indirect" game, does ring true to my
experiences, though it seems a little basic for me, personally. (I
hazard that there are a LOT of newbies who use what they call
"indirect" simply because they're afraid of being "caught out" -- that
is, they don't WANT the chick to know that the only reason they're
talking to her is that they want to eventually fuck/have-relationship-
with/PU her. But I don't really subscribe to that fear. I don't mind
people "knowing" that I'm after them. In fact, ALL CHICKS ALREADY KNOW
that the "only" reason males exist in their universe at all is in order
to fuck them, so it's not like you're "fooling" them with indirect game.
As RJ says, "I make no excuses for my desires as a man." So, anyway, IF
and when I go indirect, in the sense you're using here, it's more
because it's a social convention to be "cool" rather than "over the
top" about sexuality, and more because it's EFFECTIVE to appear actively
disinterested even if she knows it's probably a false appearance. I
thought I'd throw that in, to give you a hint as to what I'm working
with and on, so we can better understand one another.) The basicness,
though, is appropriate, since I asked such basic questions and, as
listed above in this post, I really lacked a basic understanding.
I dunno. I remember when we had to read "Mrs. Dalloway" by Virginia
Woolf in undergrad. I liked it, I could appreciate Woolf's amazing grasp
of language and philosophy and all that. But I didn't think it was one
of the nine greatest novels ever written, or that its philosophy about
life was so bleepin' brilliant that we should all memorize passages from
it. However, most of the class did. We were all of us at an age when we
SHOULD have been 'absorbing' social networks and the zig-zagging
relationships among humans in a group, and (since we were all on a camp-
hormone-type residential college campus, and meeting IN A GROUP exactly
the size and membership of Dr. Dubrow's Literature 202 in order to
discuss the book) most of the class members were going, "Like, wow, it
explains it all." Because, see, the primary "revelation" of the novel
is that the "leaden circles dissolving in the air" (the chimes of Big
Ben) do the same thing as the "inextricably intricate web of
connections" which link all humans. There's this kind of "things wash
over us, we are part of the net" type of philosophy underneath it all.
Most of the class was going, "Dude, Dr. Dubrow, you are like SOOOO DEEP!
That is like SOOO AMAZING!" as undergrads are wont to do. I was going,
like, "Umm, can we read something by a guy now? Some dead long-since guy
from the Enlightenment, please, like maybe Swift or Johnson? They don't
get hung up on all that fake non-existent crap."
So, you see, now that I look back on it I can understand that even in
undergrad I was missing out on observing something. (And, no surprise, I
wasn't getting laid in undergrad either.)
To sum up, I do agree with you that this shit is going on. I think the
consciousness-raising effort of this thread will allow me to jump-start
my antennae, get them looking out for things like that in the proper way
again. I'm surprised and dismayed that my questions about "logistics"
do, indeed, turn out to be a type of "inner game»" issue. At least it's
not an issue about confidence or chutzpah or having an interesting life,
though. It's more, an issue about accepting and starting to read that
the social network has many sub-networks which I would do well to
utilize. I guess I KNEW that fact, but didn't credit it with sufficient
weight to actually understand its relation to either (a) my questions
about logistics or (b) my interest in my target.
I think, when the "isolate" thing starts to happen -- whether it's
merely a venue change or it's actually a "let's go hide in the back seat
of my car" fuck close -- I'm not handicapped at all. I have interesting
stories, many passions I can communicate clearly; I am a jazz riffing
soloist at "pattern language" when I need to really kick her emotions
into high drive; I have intelligence and wit and other levels of "brain
value"; I have a broad-based education and an adventurous spirit and a
lot of life experiences that mark me as a "man of the world"; I'm
completely comfortable with my "desires as a man" (see RJ, above); but
I'm not consistently getting myself INTO LOGISTICAL SITUATIONS where
this stuff can be useful at moving a chick's mood.
I'm kind of amazed that chicks actually have a "natural" eye for the
logistics stuff -- I don't necessarily believe that idea. I know that
they DO have an instinctive interest in, and facility with, social
gamesmanship of the "who's who in the group" sort. But do they
"naturally" (all of them; generalizing, here) remember which bar has
comfy couches and which setting would be most conducive to a parking-lot
make-out, or to an isolate-from-fat-cockblock-friends dance-floor
maneuver, or to a need-the-cockblock-now bar layout? I don't think so.
In fact, I think they're pretty much MORE oblivious to logistics /
tactics than I was. This is a good thing. It means that we can lie in
wait for the lion and spring our trap. All we have to do is know where
to lay the trap.
It's really beginning to surprise me, the new point of view I'm
developing.
Here are some questions:
What about locations you don't know? Most of your logistical advice, so
far, has been (for lack of a better word) 'geographical'. Would you say
that most of logistics is all about knowing the venue(s) in your home
town? What do you do when you go traveling?
Another question. What about things that aren't geographical -- is it
all down to group theory? I understand that Mystery likes to defuse the
cockblock first, and likes to win the group over before trying to
isolate a target. But that can work only as well as the practicioner,
and can work exactly against most people who are not capable of
portraying themselves as "performers for the group" -- something that a
professional magician (Mystery!) would be congruent in, but something
that a professional writer would not, for example. Are there
"logistical" solutions to this conundrum?
What about the fact that my antennae are actually quite acute AFTER THE
FACT. I am like a damn novelist with my "deep understanding" of human
nature when I'm talking about it to my ex-girlfriends on the phone.
There's a million sub-motivations and sly maneuvers that I know other
people have done, but I've always been observer rather than participant.
Likewise with the classes I teach, the teams I coach, the groups at
work. I KNOW what's going on, I see it happen. I just can't (yet)
REDIRECT it in any useful way. How does one transfer skill X into skill
Y, from outsider to in?
--
The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in
higher esteem those who think alike than those who think
differently.
Friedrich Nietzsche
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