Contra PUA
The modern man is obviously disconnected from his roots. I imagine that a young man born after 1997 or so likely spent more combined time watching movies, gaming, and spending time on the internet than in environments designed for social interaction by the time they reached adulthood. Most of these places have essentially disappeared, but they are probably still more common for children and teenagers than they are for adults. Those in school are likely to spend more time in school related clubs, team sports, and other similar activities than adults are (unfortunately for us adults). Nonetheless, an hour a week or so of social time is nothing in comparison to the multitude of hours spent before the permanently flashing television set of the boomer-run household. When the child has retreated to their room they spend countless hours before smaller sets of screens.
What I have described is not a great recipe for the creation of socially competent young adults. Many escape, obviously. There are still plenty of young men around who can maintain eye contact and carry on a conversation, but the share of socially awkward youths has doubtlessly increased. When these young men decide that it is time to interact with the fairer sex, they are not equipped with any of the necessary tools required to identify and attract a sufficiently suitable woman. Their fathers and uncles have been out of the game for so long that they cannot comprehend how singularly the technological arms race has obliterated traditional forms of dating. The traditional advice varies between James Bond style flirtation tips that will certainly get you set with a restraining order, and fairy tale prince charming style advice that will certainly get a young man eaten by a dragon. Other role models found in film, porn, and TikTok shorts are equally deranged (do not smash your cheekbones with a hammer to make yourself more pretty).
Enter the PUA. This man claims to understand every aspect of attracting a woman. They can easily identify an insane woman and have created powerful shields against feminine mating strategies. This is Machiavelli’s prince in contrast to the boomer’s De Monarchia. If you buy his eBook and pay $2000 to go to his redpill conference, you too can become an expert on picking up loose women! There is of course, a major grifting industry around the manosphere. Nonetheless, some of the ideas they bring to the table are insightful, and have a consistent carry-over to the political realm. Concepts like the shit-test are quintessential for understanding life. It is almost necessary for a young man in the modern world to read some manosphere literature, but it is deadly to make this literature one’s north star.
Apart from the grift, the danger lies in the goal. Manosphere literature tends to completely reject married life, and if some of these concepts prove useful for a single man trying to ‘get laid’ they prove detrimental to the pursuit of a happy married life. Separate from the fact that most of these men are divorcees of often horrible harlots, the goal seems to avoid that trap while falling into another. The new goal is ‘getting laid.’ But then what? I once read manosphere literature by a divorcee, I believe his name was Richard Cooper. His advice was essentially that a man should string along multiple women, and remove them whenever they wanted something serious. His other advice was to get a motorcycle. The nomadic playboy lifestyle is a lonely one. In order to continue to be an unrestricted man, you must have no real responsibilities. You must be able to pack up and leave at a moment’s notice. She wants an engagement ring? Time to move across the country.
Nothing comes after the goal. The goal of the PUA seems to be to die a lonely bachelor with no responsibility and nothing to take to the grave but a long list of women slept-with. There is no place in the PUA vision for sitting on the couch watching your grandchildren devour the cookies your wife just baked. The life of the PUA is sterile. Like the life of Robert DeNiro’s character in heat: “Don’t let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner.” What this really means. The PUA lives outside of society, responsible for nothing but himself. The PUA is actively deracinating himself. This may sound pleasant to some, but what it means is that the PUA will have no legacy. No one will remember his name. The women they slept with will also die, the books they wrote will be forgotten.
The most sterile aspect of the PUA vision is its lack of children. Children would interfere with the PUAs access to sex, they would interfere with the PUAs ability to pick up and move along. Contrast this with the goal of the PUA. The PUA wants sex, but not what inevitably follow, therefore, the PUA must ensure that the sex he has is as sterile as possible, lest he become actually responsible for someone else. It’s not as easy to ‘spin plates’ when there’s a diaper that needs changing ASAP. Real life is messy, and forces a man to take on unexpected roles at home. This is why the PUA is essentially a large child, or a woman. They do not want to take responsibility for their actions, they want jump branches, they want to be surrounded by a pretty life that was sold to them by the 80s movies they watched as children. It is a perpetual childhood where the PUA will never have to compromise or grit his teeth and pick up his cross. Instead, he packs up his things and leaves.
My father gave me the following advice after I was married: “You will almost always have more energy than your wife. This energy is given to you in order to take care of things when she cannot.” Recently, my pregnant wife and my son were both very ill. I would return home from work with little energy and lots of chores to do. Was my wife shit-testing me? Was she trying to establish authority over me? Did I walk out because dinner wasn’t ready and the house wasn’t put together? Of course not. We are built differently, and it is the responsibility of them man to do literally everything he is capable of as needed. One funny aspect of this is that the things PUAs hate the most (changing diapers, doing household chores) demonstrate to the woman that she usually performs these tasks because it is convenient, not because the husband cannot.
In short, take what advice you will from this, but remember that the PUA can only teach you how to get laid, not how to handle anything that comes afterword.