Ok, so like I said, I'm gonna post something I posted on another forum. Now this was a similar discussion, but I'm not going to go through and edit the thing, so there will probably be some things that don't pertain to this discussion and if so, please don't bother to bring them into things as I don't want to hijack the thread.
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Now Rye, hold up. I wasn't being an ass with my previous post. To me it seems that the personal accountability issue is being skipped, and that's where myself and a couple of others are concerned.
I personally see nothing wrong with debate and with intellectual conversation . . . if it's going somewhere. But on this thread all we are doing is as a couple of people have pointed out on this thread, going nowhere.
The personal accountability issue is being skipped over, which is what my point was in the original post. In my view, it's not the community itself that screws anyone's life up, because it's each of our personal choice as far as what we do with our life. Period. Sure the community puts out material that can teach guys how to be social robots and all this stuff, but that same material also teaches other guys how to build a meaningful life, so obviously it's not the material itself that leads one guy the wrong way and one guy the right way, but rather how they interpret the material . . . hence the personal accountability. Which is what my point has been all along.
I think the only reason this discussion may not go anywhere, is because of the focus on personal accountability. I'm not saying there is no need for emphasis on said accountability, merely that there's really not a whole lot to be done about it, as that is a personal responsiblity and choice and aside from telling people to be critical in their thinking, there isn't much more we can do; we can't force people to examine what they are reading and not believe everything they read, that's just not within our realm of influence. I think that's actually part of the point you're trying to make if I'm not mistaken and exactly why you guys seem so frustrated with the argument, correct?
My side of the argument though, is that we DO have the ability to affect this issue by putting forth more material that goes against that mindset and that causes people to see a wider perspective merely by reading it. We have the ability to post stuff that doesn't conform to the social robot way of thinking and encourages people to think more diversely. They may not think about that information critically and take a personal responsibility to compare it to other perspectives and ways of thinking, so again that is their personal accountability falling short and something we have no influence over. Yet by putting forth more open-minded material and stuff that doesn't emphasize happiness through sex, we have the ability to do a bypass of many of those issues previously discussed as being common within the community. This IS within our zone of influence and thus it isn't a waste of time to discuss, because we can talk about in what ways we can be more effective in promoting the health and integrity of the community and make action plans to achieve those goals.
See where I'm coming from? You made this thread with the initial intent of just saying, "Look, the community isn't at fault, it's your responsibility to think about shit." But that doesn't change anything, that just hopefully tells people to think about things and hopefully they listen. That message doesn't reach everyone and thus doesn't have a dramatic and wide ranged effect upon the community, it merely affects the people that read it. What I'm talking about is the problems that exist within the community and waging a battle against them that we can actually constantly do through being vigilant in everything we say and do with people. We can have a measurable impact and effect upon the community through these steps and this is within our control, whereas saying that the responsibility rests upon everyone else and there's nothing you can do about it.
Personally I'd prefer to have some level of control and responsibility over things. I'd rather have the ability to make changes and improve the state of things from where they are right now.
I've discussed this with Sean Messenger and we realised we have a common goal is this and so I'm attending his workshop in a week and a half in the hopes of us being able to work together to further the concepts of happiness through personal responsiblity, growth and development. In turn that will improve the vibe within the community and perhaps cause more people to take that responsibility of personal accountibility more seriously because of the new mentality.
Currently I don't believe the prevailent mentality promotes such thinking; I feel that it promotes listening to the well known guys that "know what they're talking about" and people just take it as gospel. By changing the focus of the community, not only do we remove the focus on fucking as many girls as you can to achieve happiness, not developing loving relationships, becoming more of a jerk in order to get the girls and all those other detestable things that Meg mentioned, well first off no longer will people have any reason to blame the community for anything, because it's all good! There isn't that focus on things that outsiders and even many of us may perceive as negative consequences of being involved in pickup.
Secondly, part of what that mentality promotes is the focus on being responsible for your own happiness and that it comes from within you, not as a result of accomplishing goals with women, but just by being content with yourself. I'll tell you right now, I haven't had sex in months because I'm so focused on other aspects of my life right now and I honestly don't give a shit! To be perfectly honest, I'm incredibly happy with the way things in my life are going right now and although I would be even happier as a result of being in a relationship with a deep connection, I know that having that and not being happy with the rest of my life would be worse than being happy with the rest of my life and not having it. Heck, if the next girl I get into a relationship with doesn't want to have sex for a few weeks, I could care less, as long as we're still in a healthy relationship that is intimate emotionally. Sex isn't relevant to happiness, it is merely an expression of that connection and I don't derive that feeling of connection through sex. Having this mentality allows me to consciously process all the information I come into contact with and evaluate whether it is congruent with my values and beliefs, or whether it will cause my values and beliefs to become better or worse as a result of integrating it. If it doesn't benifit me, then I don't integrate it, but I still remember it.
By making a push towards this mentality and promoting that sort of thinking with the right kind of material, it has a cascading affect and people become more apt to think critically and accept their personal accountability. The negative aspects of the community become greatly reduced and they become the minority rather than the majority. Then the whole argument becomes irrelevant as a result. It would be like arguing that living in New York causes you to join a gang, just because a small fraction of the population there participates in gangs and that is a complete fallacy of biased statistics and hasty generalizations, so it is easily dismantled. As it stands, look how long we have been discussing the argument because of the state of the community; who's responsiblity is it; what causes it; where does the blame rest; what can be done to fix it? All gone and easily dismissed within the length of one sentence, "That is a minority of the population and within any population, there will always be an undesireable element - even within a small town of a couple hundred people there are a few people that aren't viewed in a positive light - this is merely a result of statistical probability and human nature." Bam. Who's gonna fuck with that argument? I wouldn't.
So sure, we can just wash our hands of it and say, "Oh well, not my fault, not my problem. We can't do anything to fix it, because it's their responsibility!" Or we can take responsiblity for what we DO have the ability to affect - which I'd argue you already do without realising how it fits into this argument - and say, "Yes the community may be currently situated to have a negative impact upon individuals within it, but we can change that! We can make it better, stronger, faster!"
I choose to see the community for it's flaws and take the responsiblity to do everything I can to change that, not just say that it's every individual's own responsibility and nothing to do with the community itself, because saying that leaves me powerless to do anything to change it and I always choose to feel empowered versus powerless in any situation. I'm sure you do too and that you probably agree with most of what I've said, it's just a matter of admitting we're not talking about two different things here, we're talking about things that can be causally related.