There’s nothing new under the sun. This is as true of art and literature as it is of human interaction. We are all wired the same way and behave according to the same scripts. The fact that we are often oblivious to their underlying mechanics and must re-learn the lessons of the ancients doesn’t mean the scripts weren’t there or weren’t predictable.

Think of your own knowledge of “blue pill chodes” now that you’re a “red pill player”. You see your friend get involved with the wrong girl, you see her playing him, and you know she’ll cheat. Equally, you know he’ll be devastated. In this particular circumstance, Rollo has done us all the favour of delineating the exact process and underlining dynamics in his books. You see it, your friend doesn’t. For you it’s an extremely predictable script but he’s in the whirl and it’s a black swan event for him.

Oh, did I say black swan?

Anyone watching The Big Short will be aware that the financial crisis of 2008 was eminently predictable so long as you had access to the script. It already happened in 1929 – fractional reserve money, margin lending, opaque dealings, and a perceptable shift from Investment to Speculation to Ponzi. Just as Rollo has collected the underlying scripts together in his books, Charles Kindleberger’s Manias Panics and Crashes collects together the underlying scripts for this cycle.

And yet, just as chodes are perpetually blindsided by relationship crisis, financial chodes are perpetually blinded by financial crisis.

But its so predictable. You just need to know the script. Naturally, given that there are seven billion people on this planet why is it that so few have access to the script? It’s almost as if there’s a conspiracy to feed us the wrong scripts. In Rollo’s world that conspiracy is the Feminine Imperative. In Finance, it’s International Finance [1]. We can say the same about politics – read Vox’s blog or check out Stefan Molyneaux’s podcast on the fall of Rome. These things are extremely easy to predict if only you have the script.

Ok, so we get handed the wrong script by evil-doers. But why are we so bad at recognising it? Why are our instincts so bad? Well, now we inch closer to PUA again.

We exist because our genes survived and then replicated. The very fact of our existence is the proof that we embody a functional solution to the survival and replication challenge. However, we haven’t won, in the past tense. We are merely still winning. We haven’t lost yet. Like footballers on the pitch, until the final whistle goes there’s still the chance the other team scores.

Life is a constant frame control battle.

Even when you’re sitting in a cafe, sipping a latte, and chatting to your friends on WhatsApp (like I’m doing right now). Think of frames as in the same battle as bacteria and antibodies, or immigrants and natives. It’s a constant battle waged at every level. It never ends. Like a real battle front you may have quiet sectors and calms before storms but it never ends.

Your frame is always under assault. This is because the easiest way to steal resources in the S&R battle is to frame control a rival into surrendering his resources to you, and thus you can guarantee the drive and capacity to do exactly that has evolved within us.

Every time you see an advertising billboard that tries to suck you in by highlighting an unmet need or an aspirational lifestyle. Every time you walk past a cake shop and smell the chocolate [2] Every time you read an internet lay report where the writer is trying to co-opt you into supporting his self-image [3] Men with strong frames can rebuff these attacks like a tank under small arms fire. Just because your frame is under assault doesn’t mean you risk surrendering your frame. You ignore most billboards and don’t eat the cakes [4]. And if you’re like me you don’t follow any other PUA’s material.

Wouldn’t it be nice if someone had collected together all the scripts of frame control? Wouldn’t it be nice if someone had laid out in precise detail why we allow people to hand us fake scripts and why we act on them? How about if he explained what the true script was so you were better able to shurg off the frame control attack and understand your actions better?

If so, check out Eric Berne The Games People Play. Berne posits that people engage in games in which they follow scripts to predictable endings (usually some ego pay-off for all involved) but that the surface-level interactions are misleading (i.e. they believe the fake script) and the games are only understandable – and thus predictable – if you have access to the ulterior motives motivating adherence to the real script. Consider this example of the If It Weren’t For You game:

Mrs. White complained that her husband severely restricted her social activities, so that she had never learned to dance. Due to changes in her attitude brought about psychiatric treatment, her husband became less sure of himself and more indulgent. Mrs. White was then free to enlarge the scope of her activities. She signed up for dancing classes, and then discovered to her despair that she had a morbid fear of dance floors and had to abandon this project.

This unfortunate adventure, along with similar ones, laid out some important aspects of her marriage. Out of her many suitors, she had picked a domineering man for a husband. She was then in a position to complain that she could do all sorts of things “it if weren’t for you.” Many of her woman friends had domineering husbands, and when they met for their morning coffee, they spent a good deal of time playing “If It Weren’t For Him.”

As it turned out, however, contrary to her complaints, her husband was performing a very real service for her by forbidding her to do something she was deeply afraid of, and by preventing her, in fact, from even becoming aware of her fears. This was one reason… [she] had chosen such a husband.

His prohibitions and her complaints frequently led to quarrels, so that their sex life was seriously impaired. She and her husband had little in common besides their household worries and the children, so that their quarrels stood out as important events.

“Yeah that’s all well and good” you may say, “but what’s that to do with me?” Well, PUA has it’s own If It Weren’t For You game. Hang around with an avoidant wing or spend a little time on PUA forums. Try analysing their complaints in terms of IIWFY, i.e. that they are deliberately choosing patterns of interaction which foreclose their ability to engage in a given action because they can’t admit that action frightens them. The combination of fear and ego will frequently lead to hysteria in the rationalisation.

“It’s so easy to bang hot girls in Russia” says the US-based chode who’s never actually been there. “If it wasn’t for my job here, I’d go”.
“I really want to do daygame” he says. “If it wasn’t for my small town with empty streets, I’d do it.”
“I want to cold open and fuck girls” he says. “But so many PUAs are scammers, you don’t know who to trust. If it wasn’t for that, I’d be a slayer.”

I’ve just picked up on this example because I was browsing through an article that linked to the IIWFY game and I immediately thought of the people who protest something is limiting their options while consistently enmeshing themselves further into that limiting factor. The book lists many many games and it’s fascinating.

[1] i.e. Jews
[2] Bodi never walks past a cake shop
[3] I’d never do that, perish the thought
[4] – Bodi notwithstanding