Ayn Rand’s seminal work Atlas Shrugged is a goldmine of reframes and pithy observations. Ponderous though her prose can be she is able to draw concepts from all parts of life around a central narrative and shake your reality. Intellectual mastery, if you will….

A theme running throughout the book is that modern society is reaping a failed harvest of post-modernist cultural-relativist collectivist bullshit. Culture has degenerated to such a low that people are reduced to base instincts and an existential fear (from having no objective values to inform their moral code) makes them huddle into collectivist organisations and attack anybody who strives for individual greatness. In such a climate people glorify mediocrity and failure, inverting human virtues of hard work, skill, and wealth creation. The sexual expression of this loser’s mentality is treating sex as an angry value-taking base act that cheapens all participants.

So let’s consider an eloquent rant from my favourite character Francisco D’Anconia on the topic of sex (page 489), then I’ll draw some conclusions for Game:

“Do you remember what I said about money and about the men who seek to reverse the law of cause and effect? The men who try to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind? Well, the man who despises himself tries to gain self-esteem from sexual adventures – which can’t be done, because sex is not the cause, but an effect and an expression of a man’s sense of his own value.”

“You’d better explain that” replies Henry Rearden. I’m sure you agree. I warn you, this gets existential.

“Did it ever occur to you that it’s the same issue? The men who think that wealth comes from material resources and has no intellectual root or meaning, are the men who think – for the same reason – that sex is a physical capacity which functions independently of one’s mind, choice or code of values…. but in fact a man’s sexual choice is the result and sum of his fundamental convictions. Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive and I will tell you his entire philosophy of life. Show me the woman he sleeps with and I will tell you his valuation of himself…”

“He will always be attracted to the woman who reflects his deepest vision of himself, the woman whose surrender permits him to experience – or to fake – a sense of self-esteem. The man who is proudly certain of his own value, will want the highest type of woman he can find, the woman he admires, the strongest, the hardest to conquer – because only the possession of a heroine will give him a sense of achievement, not the possession of a brainless slut.”

“He does not seek to gain his value, he seeks to express it. There is no conflict between the standards of his mind and the desires of his body. But the man who is convinced of his own worthlessness will be drawn to a woman he despises – because she will reflect his own secret self, she will release him from that objective reality in which he is a fraud, she will give him a momentary illusion of his own value and a momentary escape from the moral code that damns him. Observe the ugly mess which most men make of their sex lives – and observe the mess of contradictions which they hold as their moral philosophy”

Vibe is everything. The girl must feel you are comfortable with who you are and she will match that vibe, feeling protected and cherished. If you seek out sluts to nail then hate on them for being sluts, you are training your self-conscious that this is your station in life. Good people will run a mile from your creepy vibe. Your game is a frantic race to bang the girl before all your skeletons fall out of their closets.

Intellectual mastery is integral to attracting and keeping top class women. To provide order to her you must have straightened out your own contradictions so she feels your leadership as a straight line. This is not to abandon Contrast Game, but this latter is a reflection of your multi-dimensional character rather than your mess of contradictions.

“Let a man corrupt his values and his view of existence, let him profess that love is not self-enjoyment but self-denial, that virtue consists, not of pride, but of pity and pain or weakness or sacrifice…. and he will have cut himself in two… He has damned himself and he will feel that depravity is all he is worthy of enjoying. He has equated virtue with pain and he will feel that vice is the only realm of pleasure, and then he will wonder why love brings him nothing but boredom, and sex – nothing but shame.”

This underlies much Dark Side thinking. For all the posturing of reasonably-successful PUAs about how women are snakes, sluts, love jerks etc they are really projecting their own broken moral compass onto the girls. Yes, girls have a certain predictable animal nature but they are also capable of submitting to effective leadership and having their characters remade into sweet sexy companions in life’s journey. Figuring out how to recognise such girls (Type 1s, and Type 2:1s) and then leading them to their potential is higher order Game. Creeping won’t work. When you hear a man hating on women he bangs, dripping with moralistic language, then it’s a fair bet he’s got some inner game work left to do.

It is not “realistic” to say women are whores and that a fulfilling LTR is impossible. It’s not “pragmatic” to say female affection needs make you a sucker for oneitis and you should thus treat women as disposable cum buckets. Such claims are not at a higher-level of red pill wisdom. They are a self-abdication of responsibility to your own happiness. It is giving up on the finer things in life. Sour grapes.

“Just as physical action unguided by an idea is a fool’s self-fraud, so is sex when cut off from one’s code of values. It’s the same issue, and you would know it. Your inviolate sense of self-esteem would know it. You would be incapable of desire for a woman you despised… One kind of half is the man who despises money, factories, skyscrapers and his own body. He holds undefined emotions about non-conceivable subjects as the meaning of life and as his claim to virtue. And he cries with despair, because he can feel nothing for the women he respects, but finds himself in bondage to an irresistable passion for a slut from the gutter. He is the man whom people call an idealist.”

“The other kind of half is that man whom people call practical, the man who despises principles, abstractions, art, philosophy and his own mind. He regards the acquisition of material objects as the only goal of existence – and he laughs at the need to consider their purpose of their source. He expects them to give him pleasure – and he wonders why the more he gets, the less he feels. He is the man who spends his time chasing women. Observe the triple fraud he perpetrates on himself. He will not acknowledge his need for self-esteem, since he scoffs at such a concept as moral values; yet he feels the profound self-contempt which comes from believing he is a piece of meat. He will not acknowledge, but he knows that sex is the physical expression of a tribute to personal values. So he tries, by going through the motions of the effect, to acquire that which should have been the cause. He tries to gain a sense of his own value from the women who surrender to him – and he forgets that the women he picks have neither character nor judgement nor standardof value. He tells himself that all he’s after is physical pleasure – but observe that he tires of his women in a week or a night, that he despises professional whores and that he loves to imagine he is seducing virtuous girls who make a great exception for his sake. It is the feeling of acheivement that he seeks and never finds.”

I believe that latter Practical Man is utterly skewered by Mr D’Aconia. It is the classic player trap and a fair bet to assume most men with a laycount above 100 either fit the mold now, or used to. When you here a man brag about creeping for a ho train of 6s, that’s who you are talking to.

This is precisely why Game requires working on your own personal value and confronting your demons. It’s why JJ says your game is a reflection of who you are as a man, and if you want better girls you need to become a better man. You can sex girls on two different planes of existence – it can be a mutually life-affirming experience of joy, or it can be a frenzied animal coupling to bust a nut and placate the demons for a few more days. The former draws a girl into your reality for complete soul collection, the latter gives flighty, flakey, psycho fuck buddies that disappear into the ether.