Get past your identity and look at the data

The stink of poly-ticks is high in this post, which has little to do with actual game, so you may want to skip it.

A reader finds it strange that I don’t have an anti-immigrant or right-wing identity, since both seem somewhat common among guys in some of the online neighborhoods I wander through, but I suspect I simply read a lot more than most guys, and that reading leads to posts like, “The best books for learning game.” It’s also led me to the literature on identity and identity formation, and there’s a good book on that subject, Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Campaign and the Battle for the Meaning of America. Identity Crisis is about the presidential campaign, sure, but it’s also about how the stock of anti-immigrant sentiment got turned into a flow of anti-immigrant sentiment in 2016.

Anti-immigrant sentiment has a long and weird history in the United States. It’s “weird” because the United States is an immigrant country; unless you are Native American, your ancestors moved here, and they probably moved here in a way that would be “illegal” today (mine did). Seriously, go back and look at the Know-Nothing Party, or this article. People hated the Irish then, as a group. People hated the Italians in the first half of the 20th Century. Over time, these groups became part of the background of the United States, as other identities formed.

Today the arguments are the same… the immigrants are coming to steal your jobs, change your religion, dirty your house, etc., etc. When the arguments remain exactly the same but the targets of the audience change, you should be real suspicion about the argument’s accuracy. You should build your identity around examining arguments, not around believing one of them. We should read more history and put forth fewer online memes. We should look at the data that show immigrants are great. We should encourage people to be free and expressive.

So where’s this RP, right-wing thing coming from? Probably from the bad feminist tendencies on the left. It is true that the feminist left-wing in Western politics is very bad. But I would encourage Red Pill guys to avoid thinking that, because the feminist left-wing is bad, we must therefore join or admire the right wing. We don’t and we shouldn’t. Game works to make the world a better place by helping guys gain the social skills and make the connections that wouldn’t happen otherwise. We should be thinking about how to do the same thing, in political terms.

There are also few genuinely religious people left, particularly among the young. Most of the “Young Christians” I know have had so many “slip ups” and “mistakes” that you can discount their protestations of faith. What takes up the space that religion used to occupy? Claire Lehmann is one of the most interesting people on Twitter and she says, “Having hundreds of people explaining to me on Twitter that everything from sex to nature to beauty is ‘political’ makes me realise that Western civilisation really hasn’t come up with a viable alternative to religion, yet. Until we do, politics will be the opiate of the masses.” A lot of Red Pill guys—like Blue Pill guys and people more generally—treat politics like a religion, instead of like an intellectual field in which new information should be able to change your mind.

If you find yourself lining up behind one party on all issues, you should really stop and ask yourself: do my views on these numerous and unrelated issues line up so neatly? Or am I following the herd?

Players know the danger of herd-following. Try to be yourself.

Outside of Twitter and among people who study actual immigrants and immigration, there is little doubt that immigration improves lives. Here is one paper, but there are many more. Don’t let emotional coverage of one extremely uncommon event sway you. Look at the data. Just as a player should not let any interaction with any given chick sway him, you should not let some random and unfortunate event sway you (unless maybe you are going to let an equally random and fortunate event sway you).

Why doesn’t this information make it to guys on Twitter? Partially because Twitter is limited in character count, so no one can make complex arguments on it (like this argument). Partially because all of us, including me, like to incorporate information that already agrees with our preexisting worldview. Partially because almost all of us need someone to hate. It’s not the Communists anymore, so immigrants and Chinese are conveniently distant bogeymen.

One of the best guys I’ve ever worked with was born in Pakistan, and his family brought him to the U.S. when he was small. He didn’t get his immigration situation sorted out till he got married (to a U.S. citizen). It is striking that the people who are most opposed to immigration have the least exposure to actual immigrants. People are more alike than not, and that is why game works in different countries: there are cultural variations, but the male-female dynamic remains. It is true that wealth and access to medicine changes the supply curves and elasticities of sex, but the game skillset and mindset remain.

The United States is great at taking in people and, within a generation, turning them into Americans. Europe should be trying to do the same thing. So let’s have less blood-and-soil, less xenophobia, and more historical knowledge. Immigration is good from both a moral and practical standpoint. Don’t let your right-wing identity get in the way of those basic facts. Think for yourself.

I have seen lots of ill-conceived political tweets from Red Pill guys, but the real response to those political tweets is book-length, not tweet length. Even this post is far too short. I write it because I want at least one comprehensive statement out there. Your identity as a player need not be linked with an anti-immigrant or right-wind ideology. Go your own way. Be independent.

The world is not a zero-sum place. If it were, we’d not have had the incredible progress of the last two centuries. Most guys know f**k all about history, and it shows. The history of xenophobia is the history of humanity.

Let’s all try to do better.

Immigrants do a great job of becoming Americans.

Is this not enough on the topic for you? Here is a follow-up post with yet more data citations.