It's more about unlearning

A case study on two distinct ways guys screw up field reports. One guy learns from it while the other does not. Here's the difference

So it’s not as if men have no mental models prior to finding the red pill and unplugging. All men have mental models, and if they were working well they would never have the need to find this place. A big hurdle in the initial unplugging experience is identifying the previous models and objectively deciding if they are useful or if they are detrimental.

A lot, and I mean a lot of guys start off their first field report, their batman origin story, with an apology. They worry they aren’t doing it right, they worry that it’s too long, they worry that it’s an annoyance to the other guys. This is your first indication that they are still working with too many previous mental models.

This isn’t a bad thing, it’s the norm. I’ve written about the process of unplugging, so has Rollo Tomassi, so has Roissy, so has everyone. The process is straight forward. A guy believes what he believes, he gets zero’d out, and he finds this place and starts to put work into changing his models, his actions, his behavior. Those new behaviors solidify new mental models, he gets a better sexual strategy and a more positive identity. Then he either moves on and lives his best life, sticks around to pass along what he knows onto others, or regresses to his previous self for a few different reasons. I’ve written about the pitfalls of regression often enough; this isn’t that sort of article.

And most guys have a hard time being zero’d out. Consider this scenario: a man has been raised his whole life to be differential toward women. He is a stereotypical nice guy. He respects women, doesn’t want to appear like he enjoys sex, and refuses to act in his own best interest. Instead, he becomes a people pleaser: hiding his badness, trying to do what he expects others to want, builds up a collective list of covert contracts in order to avoid abandonment form those he wants validation from.

Now this guy is 30, and the women surrounding him are 27-34. They have baby rabies. They have reached the epiphany phase of their sexual strategy.

criminally undervalued work

Now they don’t want the lover, they want the provider. This isn’t perceived as a case of serendipitous aligning of interests to the guy, but the culmination of his life’s work. You have either thought yourself, or had others espouse, various forms of coping statements, or turned their necessity into a virtue:

“I knew if I just stuck to the program it would eventually work for me!”

“Yeah, all those guys maybe fucked her, but I got her heard and won in the end.”

“She’s not like that anymore. Sex is evil and dirty, what we have is different.”

“I had to work a long time to earn this prize, I’m the luckiest guy in the world!”

This is why guys walk into their own misery. It’s not some pattern of abuse by feminists or evil cabals of lizard people causing the downfall of men. It’s men, who have been raise by the very women who love them most: mothers, sisters, friends and family. They don’t know how to raise men, they don’t know women, they know themselves (even though they kind of don’t) and train the man from a young age to do what they wish they were into, not what they actually *are into.

Is it any wonder that a man unplugged is then having to deal with a existential crisis along with his impending divorce? Your entire life is a lie, and that bitch wants your kids and a paycheck.

This first report is a great example of how men bring a lot of their baggage with them. The first field report

Even though he knows the format, even though he has had the opportunity to read thousands of them in hopes of learning how it works, a man cannot get it right until he tries it himself and gets his ass handed to him. It’s not because guys are stupid, it’s because we frame things so poorly. Men life a life with modern Chrisitanity™ or some other schema (as the egg heads call it) and when they write they can’t help but frame their situation from within that schema, using the older mental models.

This is because, even though unplugging, praxeological men are developing new mental models that doesn’t mean they don’t have to actively work early and hard at removing the old ones.

Billy’s first post

I'll go first. First time.

I'm taking responsibility for being a weak-ass drunk captain for the last several years. It was never an ‘I used to be alpha and slowly went beta’ transformation for me as I was never really much of an ‘alpha’[1] but I did have my stuff together a lot better than I used to. I was caught up in women's equality ideas about a dozen years ago and it created problems in the marriage that I am now digging out of.

I allowed the finances to become untenable and am in the final stages of completing a budget. That will be done this week and shared with wife by the weekend. I will be making a plan to address our debt once the budget is in place.[2]

I've been active getting things done around the house. Last month I began keeping a list, she knows where it is[3] for household things to be added. When I see something on the list, I'll quietly make a plan to fix it or do it, and I don't talk about it. She notices, of course. The basement is being renovated, so last night I simply[4] told her I'm going to work in the basement, so I disappeared for an hour and moved a bunch of things into place. She said,

“I can't believe you did that by yourself.” I just smiled at her.[5]

I'm reading, but not reading actively.[6] That needs to change. In connection with this, I'm working on my MAP and hope to have that done by this time next week.

Diet. We still eat out way too often (it's a convenience issue) [7] but I've begun cooking more often. I enjoy it and it helps me take my mind off of stressors. Last week I cooked three nights instead of getting fast food. I plan to make a weekly meal plan to aid in grocery shopping (and the budget).

Shit I need to own[8]

Drinking too much. I have a drink every night. I need to reduce this [9] because I feel like I am in a mental fog all the time.

Lifting. I need to stop making excuses and get to a gym. In the meantime, I can at least start with bodyweight exercises at home.

I waste too much time on the internet. I need to reduce this time, especially at home in the evening, and spend more time with the kids and in reading. I've read NMMNG and MMSL but want to reread and take action notes.

Edit for formatting.[10]

[1] First indication. He thinks of alpha as an identity, not a collection of behaviors and qualities that elicit a hormonal and sexual response

[2] Second indication. He frames this as a manipulative experience, just like women do. That he frames his issue as fixing her spending, while framing it as ‘our debt’ he has adopted the communist-like idea of her issue, our problem. You see others, like ‘we are pregnant,’ ‘we decided on a divorce’ etc. He can’t even fathom himself as a person, only an extension of ‘her.’

[3] Third indication. He still looks for permission in everything he does. This covert contract is known as the dancing monkey improvement programme. You learn to spot it quick because every man has it when he starts.

[4] Fourth indication. DEER, defend, explain, excuse, rationalize. You’ll look for the words simply, just, or only as a descriptor to guys actions. This is from guys who seek to minimize what they are working towards. Textbook hiding the badness, toxic shame, other basic concepts from glovers work on nice guys.

[5] See point 3

[6] Sixth indication. This is what we used to call being ‘red pill aware.’ Guys who treat any of these models like they are magic salves one picks up from osmosis. Knowing the path is not the same as walking the path, and you’ll often see nice guys try to get participation trophies for half assed passing knowledge of stuff. They miss the point, the point is to have better strategy, outcomes and identity. Just knowing that resources are there counts for dick all.

[7] See point 6. It’s a big reason I tell guys to make their reports past tense. Because his future tense, starting to cook better, is trying to hand wave the failure of eating like shit, not to mention the DEER justification.

[8] New Years resolutions. This is absolutely toxic feminine behavior and guys have to stop it as soon as possible. The purpose of these statements are that they give the same reward dopamine that actually doing the thing gives you, but with much less effort. Thinking along these lines makes posts turn into a catholic confession where you

Confess your sins

Call yourself a bad ‘identity’

Make a declaration to be better … tomorrow.

Insert good feelings without having to get anywhere. Guys will repeat this pattern for years, making 0 progress or even knowing what progress would look like.

[9] Connected to the previous, but different. The problem here is that it’s vague, which makes it fungable. In other words, anything you do here will either 1. Be good enough that you call it a win, or 2. Never be good enough because of moving goalposts. Neither one is useful and functions as a way to soothe ones ego. This is for both the guys who think they are the king and those who want to self flagellate as the martyr.

[10] Final indication. While he says the edit was formatting, the actual edit removes a specific issue which is the crux of this. He makes a pass at his wife, she claims to have a mild cold and she lays into him, shaming him for even trying to fuck her. We work very hard to remove the things that make us uncomfortable, but ultimately, that single reason is why all the rest of this tuff exists. He is hiding his toxic shame when it’s exactly what he needs to honestly address.

While I have not found names (or given them myself) to these various mental models, a lot of guys have them. In just a small post, I’ve given a little excerpt into the issues guys face when finally learning about red pill and the field report and the OODA loop it resides within. Now not any single guy is willing or able to go through all of them, why they are detrimental, and what one could do instead. Why would they? We all have our own problems right?