A Quick Word on Frame.

--Lupe, 2014

I originally posted this as a comment in another Red Pill sub, but I wanted to share it here in case it helps any newer people understand frame better.

I just want to mention something about frame. Frame was a really hard concept for me to get a handle on at first, but then two things I read cause me to think deeply on it for some time and come to a solid conclusion. Firstly, I reread Rollo’s article on frame over and over again, how he talks about it being something we intuit, but can’t really define. He says it’s about “who’s reality we are operating in”. Then I re-read Mark Manson’s models for the third time, and his definition of true confidence was “investing more into your own perceptions than other people’s perceptions”.

These two things were on my mind one night when a friend, who is a rather emotional beta, went off at me one night for something. Whatever it was (this was some time ago), I remember thinking “hang on, I don’t agree with how he is seeing things here, and he isn’t really convincing me, he’s just being emotional, so whatevs”. And I said that to him. “Okay bro, sorry that’s how you feel”. He proceeded to prod and poke, at one point calling me a psychopath because I wouldn’t fall into his frame. I was “investing more into my perceptions than his”. I wasn’t responsive. I was just, okay man, that’s how you feel and you’re entitled to that opinion, cool, let’s move on. I was “holding frame” in a sense. He ended up storming out.

This is how I discovered frame. Frame is the filter through which we perceive reality. There is a very real pressure for us to share frame with those around us, because our emotions and our perceptions are shared through our empathic neurons. This is a simple survival response manifest on a much larger scale, where we see someone startle and sprint our natural instinct is to startle and sprint. Much the same except more highly evolved. We want others to share our perceptions of reality. It pisses us off when they don’t.

Thing is, our brains aren’t selected to perceive reality accurately. Our brains were selected to help us climb social hierarchies and charm those around us. So when it comes to perceiving reality, we hamster. Everyone lives in their own reality, because the human mind is not capable of perfectly perceiving reality in an objective sense, it must deduce reality through reason. This reality is then stacked up to the reality of those around us.

All of a sudden everything made sense. When I was a teenager I was homeless for a stretch and I did some weird things to get by. I noticed if I walked into a store, picked food up and started eating it as I walked out casual as fuck I never got stopped. The one time I got caught I raised my eyebrow, gave the person a look like they were completely insane, and in a tone dripping with accusation said: “Um, this is mine?”, then backed off and walked out. Dude looked like he was tripping balls. Because my frame was stronger than his. This is not holding frame, this is narcissistic manipulation. But the example stands to prove a point.

Now I get frame. Frame is what Manson calls “true confidence”, investing more into your own perceptions than others. Holding the frame is holding the lens through which all parties involved perceive reality. Holding frame is standing in your truth, standing in your reality, immovable unless convinced fairly to do so. Unapologetic, unashamed, completely secure in your reality.

Holding your frame is frustrating to others because there is a power dynamic not being openly acknowledged but intuitively felt, in that humans want to share the same frame. Humans want group think. If you hold your frame properly, people will fall into it, because reality is contagious. Just like a flight or fight response is contagious throughout a herd. Why pray tell, have humans universally engaged in argument and rationalization at such high levels, yet universally found differing “truths”, if the purpose of rationalization were to actually find objective truth?

No. Truth, or objective reality, is constructed within the mind and then defended by the higher pre-frontal functions. Frame is this action played out on a social level.

Sorry this is rushed, I don’t really have time to finish this in a coherent way, I’m in a hurry.