| Since I'm studying cultural psychology courses, I've been set to thinking. Things that I study are pretty much clashing with popular way of self help. Before I get back to pick up stuff, I'll try to prove my point by current topics. Let me explain.
There has never been so many researches. Scientific researches discover many things. Almost everybody knows that nowadays, we all eat too much fat, we don't do enough sports, we're using too much water. And yet, even although we all know that, it seems like we're not doing anything about it. How come?
Most people in Western Europe are now told at school that we should respect gay people and that all people are equal. Yet I dare to say that still most people will be shocked if they see two gay people making out in public.
The point is, people don't behave directly from a set of rules and values. People are not that rational. We behave like we behave because of years of very subtile conditioning, training, a feeling of the situation, imitation. For instance, we still get shocked by seeing 2 gay people making out because some social convention is broken. Maybe, hypothetically said, many generations or ages ago, some people decided that it is not appropriate for people of the same sex to have a sexual relationship. By years of conditioning, training, a feeling of the situation, imitation, the following generations afterwards feel what is appropriate and whate is not. They didnt have a clear instructor who clearly told them what is wrong and what is right. Their behavior became a pattern for the group or community in which they live, and they're most often not aware of why they're behaving like they do. We are who we are because of our relations and attitudes towards others.
This is why the term culture is very dangerous. We like to think that other gay-hating "cultures" are bad. For instance, western people often say that the muslim culture is bad because of islam and its rules and values.
Important is that culture doesn't do anything. People don't react from a set of laws, but because they have been conditioned, trained and made sensitive for situations. That's why non western people might be shocked and might even react violently, because the situation is compulsory.
If you've been conditioned that beating people is bad, you don't beat other people because your mom said so, but because the situation is very compulsory to not beat people, like society forces you very hard to not do so.
Sure we hear of some individuals who still got through these, but if we come to think of it, we hear these stories because they are remarkable, and they're remakable because they might be one in a thousand who do so.
Now I'm getting closer to my point. Back to pick-up stuff. Have you ever gave an afc friend the book "the game", or a dvd, film or book from some pick up guru, only to notice that, even although he has read or seen all the stuff, he is still as afc as he used to be? That his behavior still hasn't changed much?
His behavior is very stubborn. A book can change awareness, but not patters of behavior that is created by tens of years of conditioning, imitating, training, creating a sense of the situation.
Most people have never been told that talking to strangers is bad. And yet, approach anxiety is still the biggest obstacle in pick up. Does approach anxiety realy has anything to do with genes, that a caveman threw a brick on your head when approaching his wife? Approach anxiety is sufficiently explainable by social conventions. When you took the bus as a little kid with your parents, you imitated your parents who ignored and avoided all the strangers on the bus, you imitated the avoiding strangers on the bus, you're parents took you back when you were talking to a stranger, strangers ignored you when you were talking to them. After a while, you get a feeling of the situation: you're seen as a weird or mad person when you start talking to people. Years later, you ignore everyone on the bus, and you're even not aware why you're doing it.
If you then would see a rastafari entering the bus, and see him starting talking to every random stranger there, your brain makes extremely quickly conclusions before your conciousness might even notice it: "that dude smoked too much pott", or "the rastafari culture is retarded".
With this being said, how can we look to the major problems in pick-up?
- approach anxiety
- neediness
- confidence
- mental masturbation
- escalation
- saying "the right" things/conversational skills
- body language
All these things are thaught to you by your past interactions with the people from your community or surroundings. Approach anxiety is already explained, neediness might arise from a lack of love from your parents during childhood or by a conditioned love (=getting love only when you do good things. People who got enough unconditioned love from their parents are the most mental healtiest people), low confidence is taught to you by repeatingly yelling father who told you're good for nothing, escalation problems might arise because behaving like a cave man is seen as barbaric in the social conventions of the upper class to which you belong (note that the feeling comes first and people give then an explanation to it). Body language is simple: we are all familiar with the idea that a goodbye wave might mean fuck you in a remote tribe in the amazone rain forest.
Personally, I still think that insight is the first and quite big step to solving pick up problems. Individual thinking does matter, but maybe only for 10-25%. It can't beat stubborn patterns of irrational and compulsory behavior, which is conditioned, trained, imitated etc in relation to the people of the the group to which you belong.
The community already made a big step in the right direction by changing it's view from a very theoretical pick up bible with many "rules" to a game in which "there is nothing you have to do or say"(60's), which says that you should forget about most rules and lines.
To my opinion, it still is not enough.
I find it very difficult to come with the right solution to the problem, which is pretty abstract. However, I think that the best solution might be finding friends, or a group of guys, who are willing to condition, train, imitate each other in pick up. Coaching is vital. For instance, you should be rewarded for opening girls, by getting a beer or a sincere natural compliment, etc.
It is realy too difficult to individualy change yourself. Like I said, you are who you are because of your relations to others. There is a saying going that 1 brain makes no brain, 2 brains make a half brain and 3 brains make full brain. If you think about, it actualy makes sense.
_________________
You WANT to make a change.
You CAN make a change.
You WILL make a change.
Ambitious to be succesfull => Shyler
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CHAT