I told you I would post again.
Negative thoughts about my ability to relate to other people have been a constant thorn in my side for my whole life. Over the past 2 years or so, a confluence of factors, including learning about the particular brand of social self-help pitched by the seduction community, moving to a new city where it happens to be easier to meet people from a conservative Christian background and thus who have at least something culturally in common with me, my increased status resulting from being a medical student (yes, it does exist, even if it's not enough to win a girl over by itself,) and the phenomenon of just being more comfortable in one's own skin that does happen as you enter your thirties, have given me reason to be more optimistic about this. I still become frustrated once in a while, but one thing I have learned is just how much your own self-perception influences others' perception of you.
I live directly across the street from a small supermarket, one that happens to be the closest full-scale grocery store to the university, and is therefore frequently patronized by students undergraduate, graduate, and professional. One evening a couple of weeks ago, on one my frequent saunters over there to pick up a few foodstuffs, three sorority chicks, to the best of my recollection a 6, a 7, and a 9, were wandering around the produce section chattering ditzily as they undertook the intellectually challenging task of selecting produce. I witnessed the following exchange:
Sorority chick: What kind of lettuce are you supposed to put on tacos?
Random passing undergrad dude: The shredded kind.
SC: (Oh, aren't you funny, blah blah blah, I don't really remember what she said) Want to come to our taco party?
RPUG: Sure.
Now RPUG looked like a pretty average guy. He wasn't a rock star. He didn't come across as super-alpha. It struck me that in the course of about 5 seconds, with one smart-ass comment, this guy had gotten himself invited to a sorority taco party.
My first reaction in situations like this has long been--and this time was no different--"Why can't I be that kind of guy? Why doesn't anything like that ever happen to me?" Maybe those thoughts come from the devil on one shoulder, because this time, another voice inside my head, call it the angel on my other shoulder, said "you are that kind of guy. Stuff like that does happen to you all the time, or at least it used to when you got out more." It occurred to me that I had always thought of myself as a low-social status nerd who is perceived by hot girls (and cool guys) as a low social-status nerd and is incapable of rolling with them. But something made me stop, do a reality check, and realize: when I was in undergrad, hot girls and cool guys invited me to parties all the time. I just always turned them down. "I can't go to parties where people drink and dance and listen to loud, currently popular music," I thought. "I'm not cool enough." But they didn't think I was a low-social-status nerd who couldn't roll with them. I created that persona in my own mind by acting that way.
The same thing happened when I started medical school. When everyone was new to everyone else and eager to make friends, I got invited to parties galore. But since I never went, figuring my social time was better spent at church where I was sure to meet a wife, I assume I soon developed a reputation as someone who just isn't interested in socializing and I stopped getting invited.
It's an uphill battle when you're fighting 33 years of negative thought patterns, but one thing I have to keep reminding myself of is that a decent appearance is actually easy to put on. In the past couple of years, I've learned to dress a bit more stylishly for social occasions, gotten contact lenses, and learned to use a bit of product in my hair, but even long before all that I could never have been mistaken for a Magic: The Gathering player. My freshman year of college, directly across the hall from me lived two of the biggest stoners I have ever met in my life. I'll never forget the time, early on in the year, when one of them, having somehow surmised that I didn't go out Friday night, said to me, perplexed and genuinely curious, "dude, did you just, like, hang out here?" Well, of course, I thought, don't you know I'm a nerd? But to him, I obviously looked like a regular guy, the kind who would be found at a frat party on a Friday night doing a keg stand or bumping and grinding with some drunk chick just like the rest of 'em. He didn't think I was a nerd. I did. It's actually easy to look like a socially mainstream person, and from there it's a choice to act the part.
As I said, it's not easy to change these thought patterns when they've been so deeply ingrained over so many years. But the evidence has long been right in front of my eyes--I simply chose to ignore it--that if I simply muster the cojones to blurt out the word "shredded" to some strange girls, I could find myself at a taco party.
It's all in your head.
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13 comments:
"Stoners...keg stand or bumping and grinding with some drunk chick"
Question is thought, is that what you really want?
There are two possible answers to that question.
1. Of course not, but knowing that it in fact would have been possible, that mainstream society was a lot more willing to accept men than I thought, would have greatly improved the way I thought about the world and interacted with it.
2. Not really. When I first started college, the very thought horrified me. But now I'm more ambivalent about it. I mean, it's not like I didn't have time to go to parties because I was too busy reading Plato, Thomas Aquinas, and Shakespeare, which is what I thought I wanted at the time and which I believed would provide me with a formative intellectual experience that would guarantee me a happy and successful life. I was just sitting in my room playing computer games.
"Why can't I be that kind of guy? Why doesn't anything like that ever happen to me?"
Well, as I'm sure you know without me having to tell you, it almost doesn't matter what exactly that guy said to those girls. The tone of voice, the posture, the eye contact are usually more important than text in such situations. Most of that non-verbal stuff is governed subconsciously.
"But they didn't think I was a low-social-status nerd who couldn't roll with them. I created that persona in my own mind by acting that way."
In such cases I was always sure that people only invited me to parties, clubs, etc. because they didn't know the real me. Which they didn't. If they knew the entire extent of my nerdiness, the idea of inviting me would have sounded comical to them. Moreover, I knew then and know now that I wouldn't have enjoyed going. It would have inevitably turned into an embarrassment - a collection of awkward moments that everyone would have recounted for years afterwards behind my back. Can't talk for you, but for me refusing to go always seemed and always will seem like the most effective way to preserve some dignity.
"...and from there it's a choice to act the part."
Not in everyone's case. Certainly not in mine.
Again, can't talk for you, but whenever I want to feel better about being a nerd, I imagine how boring my life would have been if I lacked the capacity to be intensely interested by anything complex or abstract, by anything that lay outside of everyday experiences. The average normal doesn't appear to be curious about much. But satisfying curiosity can be so much fun. Overall, I'm happy with the trade-offs.
Perhaps you simply take your mental life for granted. Imagine life without it for a moment.
"I was just sitting in my room playing computer games."
Yes, but all the while you had the capacity to become interested in something more complex. A lot of those stoners didn't and never will.
It's all about paths of least resistance. For the true socially mainstream person, going out on Friday night is the path of least resistance. If (for some reason) they consciously decided to become nerds, they'd have to devote discipline and effort to stay home Friday night. But for you and I, it's reversed. We must apply discipline to go out, while staying home is what comes natural.
Well, as I'm sure you know without me having to tell you, it almost doesn't matter what exactly that guy said to those girls. The tone of voice, the posture, the eye contact are usually more important than text in such situations. Most of that non-verbal stuff is governed subconsciously.
True, but what struck me about this interaction was how ordinary the guy seemed. He did not come across as particularly alpha to me. He looked and acted like a pretty average guy.
Can't talk for you, but for me refusing to go always seemed and always will seem like the most effective way to preserve some dignity.
I know what you're saying, but for me, there have been cases when I went, "loosened up" as the more social are always exhorting us to do, and actually made a decent impression on people. It's just that those instances were never frequent enough to become the norm and break out of my overall pattern of socially avoidant behavior.
But satisfying curiosity can be so much fun.
When I was younger and more optimistic, during my last 2 years of high school, I thought that it was. But that's because I thought that there awaited for me a whole world out there that 1) supported satisfaction of intellectual curiosity, and 2) provided companions with whom to share said satisfaction. I thought that was the whole point of college. Life turned out to be drastically different. There's scant time to get lost in a book the way I used to when I was 10 years old, and even if I could find the time and peace of mind to read and drink deep of, say, Plato's Republic, how could I feel that it was at all relevant to my life? I know NO ONE in my personal life who is at all interested in such things. As a commenter at Thursday's said recently, the right is anti-intellectual and the left is anti-Western. My med school friends' idea of intellectual stimulation is The Daily Show, and my church friends' is the Ohio State game.
We must apply discipline to go out, while staying home is what comes natural.
That is a very good point. When it gets late in the week (provided I have a free weekend coming up--curse you, med school) and my thoughts naturally turn to how much I'm looking forward to Friday night when I will get home, scarf down some leftovers for dinner, recline on the couch and watch a movie I downloaded earlier in the week (alone), pop some Benadryl, and go to bed at 8, I often reflect upon how weird those thoughts would seem to those for whom that would seem like torture, for whom heading out to the bars/clubs is as natural as breathing. I think of how nervous and awkward I felt last Friday evening when I texted one of my friends to see if the regulars were meeting at the pub that night because I was just that starved for social interaction. Then I thought, "why should I feel weird about this? THEY don't think it's a big deal. I'm the only one who does."
I know NO ONE in my personal life who is at all interested in such things. As a commenter at Thursday's said recently, the right is anti-intellectual and the left is anti-Western. My med school friends' idea of intellectual stimulation is The Daily Show, and my church friends' is the Ohio State game.
Quite. You and I are what I call "Lost Souls" - seeming to belong nowhere and with no one; longing for the company of other minds that share our mode of thought, but finding that nobody ever, ever meets all the necessary criteria for true, meaningful trust and fulfillment.
I still do mean to email you, Hermes; give me another week or so.
"I know NO ONE in my personal life who is at all interested in such things."
Neither do I. Then there's the problem that different nerds tend to be interested in different things. However, the Internet does help with that - there are people on it interested in almost anything.
Just stumbled across this post. OP, good on you, this is a great insight to have. The fact is that with your intellectual depth you can now enter the social world and contribute something real and substantial to it. I don't mean preaching about Plato to coeds. It's more a case of becoming fully comfortable in society, studying it intimately, and identifying those pressure points or vulnerabilities where you can really improve people's lives. This might occur in silence, or might not. Anyway, keep practicing flexibility of mind and get out there. Drink deep of life as it flows on. And if you need a little boost, image search "Courage Wolf". Take care brother.
Presumptuous sorry but I transformed myself with 'sexual transmutation'. I don't care how religious a dude is he still empties his sack.
Check out this thread.
http://www.sosuave.net/forum/showthread.php?t=20053&page=99
A bit puerile but at least someones discussing it.
"As a commenter at Thursday's said recently, the right is anti-intellectual and the left is anti-Western. My med school friends' idea of intellectual stimulation is The Daily Show, and my church friends' is the Ohio State game."
That was me, and this is something of interest to me, as I'm about to leave NY for parts Red. I kind of wonder if you should try looking around on the college side of your med school campus or something. Maybe a cute classicist or something. I hate to see the Western tradition disappear.
Maybe after you get out of residency (or if you go into psych or derm or something with short hours) you could volunteer with your local Republican party. I'm sure there are at least some political junkies in there. Whether they've read Kirk and Oakeshott I don't know.
I am sure you aren't half the nerd, and nerd-look-like you think you are.
And some people have read Plato's Republic. Including women... :)
Earth to Hermes! Is there anyone out there?
Still here, just haven't had time (or ideas, thanks to residency taking up all my brain power) to blog. Samson, I see your blog has been made private. Any other way to get in touch with you? You can always email me at the address listed in the sidebar.
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