Introverts and Prostitutes

Posted by Gluon the Ferengi on November 24, 2009

I’ve been hesitating to write this one. I’ve been considering the potential of this information to do harm. I’ve been considering the opposite sex. I’ve been considering whether it’s wise to make this sort of information public in the nominal anonymity of the internet. However, I have to give in. Most of the time a male true introvert lacks any fellow human beings with which he has anything in common. Most of the time there are absolutely zero even mildly suitable female partners in his immediate circle of acquaintance. Attempts at internet dating are no less hellish. The only option(short of everlasting celibacy) within mainstream society for men who don’t fit in is to try to ‘game’ females for which he has no personal affection. This activity involves lying to someone else. For an introvert, it must involve a fair measure of lying to oneself. It is yet another scenario where the introvert’s need to conceal his true personality is critical. This approach is destructive and/or unethical for several reasons. It:

-Acknowledges and reinforces the larger society’s belief that introversion is a mental sickness.

-Reinforces a lifetime of having to conceal one’s true self.

-Reduces one to lying for one’s own selfish purposes. Forces one into a lifestyle of operating under false pretexts and diminishes one’s character.

-Consumes huge amounts of time and money. Becomes a distraction from the acquisition of knowledge, the sharpening of the intellect, from every other pleasure life has to offer.

Every time I was faced with the dating scene and how I would have to lie, lie, lie to get anywhere, I thought of how devoting myself to such a toxic environment would diminish me and force me to deny myself. I never could bring myself to truly devote myself. Yet, like most men, I was unwilling to live a life of celibacy. I had my needs, the unfulfillment of which proved another annoying distraction in my life. There had to be another solution. A solution that consumed a minimum of time and resources while being as ethical as possible. Mainstream persons might be shocked at the answer that occurred to me:

prostitution.

Perhaps the main appeal was simply the stark honesty in it.

-There is no lying or misunderstanding. Both parties are absolutely clear in their intent and motives. There is no possibility of misleading or deceiving someone. One need not stoop to becoming a deceiver.

-There is no need to act like someone else or hide one’s own personality. One need not suffer the indignity of denying oneself in order to get the prize carrot at the end of the stick.

-The cost of a prostitute is usually going to be less than the cost of dating.

-The cost in time of a prostitute is always going to be much less.

-Once again, honesty to oneself and to others. Unless a man feels genuine affection and affinity for a girl he mostly wants just one thing. Lots of men on the dating scene have to lie to themselves about this, but it’s the truth.

I was already in my twenties and still hadn’t lost my virginity. My body had lusted ceaselessly since my earliest teens. After a decade of eternal unfulfillment, I’d had enough. I needed sex, but I was both unwilling and unable to trick a girl into doing the deed with me. What I needed above all, even as much as intimate physical contact, was to have the knowledge of what sex was actually like. All I had to go on was the obviously distorted images of it in hollywood movies and TV shows. To lose my virginity was to engage in exploration, same as reading a book on a new subject. It was also to attain another degree of separation from my birth society. I needed my own definition of sex in my head apart from all the televised nonsense.

I finally got my chance in Amsterdam’s red light district while travelling across Europe. It is illegal for the prostitutes there to have pimps, most I’m told are independent agents just making money for themselves. They are just like any other self-employed people under the law of their country and can get themselves checked for diseases whenever they like. I chose this place in particular because I wanted to reduce my risk and be sure I was going to be with someone who was in the business by her own choice. The experience was very satisfying but it didn’t feel extraordinary at all. Yet, I felt as though I had been cheated all my life of something integral to human existence. It felt like one of those normal pleasures that ought to be daily and routine like eating a good meal or taking a good dump. It was just as natural as eating. In fact, I best enjoyed it on an empty stomach and then I’d go eat at a restaurant with that pleasant buzz still in my body. The experience confirmed what I had already known. The hype in pop-culture is completely undeserved and it exists because of the simple fact that sex makes money. It makes money because it is so hard to find a desirable partner in real life. People tend to want what they can’t have, even if it’s not deserving of such intense desire.

I am aware that what I did would be considered by most people to be ‘sleazy’ at best. Some of my friends were horrified when I admitted what I had done(they asked). However, I still understand what I did to be the most ethical solution and that is why I’m writing about it today. The majority culture in English speaking countries strongly disapproves of prostitution. Yet the same culture is perfectly OK with men who just want sex deceiving women who are searching for long term relationships. It seems rather warped to me. Just another indictment of my silly birth culture. Just another reason to turn away from the accepted orthodoxy. For the most part, people aren’t trying to be ethical. They’re just mindlessly following whatever they were taught and reacting to the values of the majority of others so they don’t get crushed.

In any case, I benefited greatly from my experiment. The experience helped put things into perspective that my birth culture had distorted. I had known intellectually that women, like men were creatures of flesh and blood but until I educated myself, I had not known this truth on the visceral level. After this experience, women had far less power over me. As a result, women were far more attracted to me.

I hadn’t the luxury of thinking about fine cuisine until I had escaped famine conditions. Once I knew I had some potential outlet for basic sex, I could turn my mind to the possibility of actually building a relationship with a woman for the first time in my life. Because I had an appreciation of just how ordinary sex is, I was able to pursue my private studies without any doubts that I was indeed missing out on something unfathomably great. I was more focused in my solitude than ever before and more content. I could finally look on all the extroverts who always seem to pair up with ease without any particular envy or insecurity. All because of a few nights not very good sex.

And when I say not very good, I mean it. You can pick any girl you want, but I have to warn prospective johns. She will try to do as little as she can for as much money as possible. You should haggle over the price and be 100% sure that it is mutually understood what you’ve agreed to do together. It’s not very good sex because one must constantly be on guard against being cheated. Also because a guy has a strict time limit to finish up. Knowing that the clock is ticking doesn’t make for the most relaxing of sessions. It’s not very good sex, but it is sex and with whoever you want.

And something that goes for anywhere in the world: DON’T USE STREETWALKERS. Most of them are under the control of pimps, might even be sex slaves, might be trying to fuel a drug addiction or all of the above. They’re also one of the best ways in the world to catch a disease.

While in a puritanical English speaking country, the best bet is undoubtedly to call up escorts and gradually find out which ones work out best.

A very important thing to know: If you are a virgin, don’t EVER tell them that you are a virgin. It’s the equivalent of going to a car dealership and telling them you’ve never bought a car before. If she knows you don’t know anything, she will use every trick in the book to quickly separate you and your money. If she thinks she can get away with it, she might even try to extort you once you’re too far along to easily stop. These ladies are not the victims they’re portrayed as in the movies. They’re tough and they’ve seen it all. They are quick to manipulate and intimidate when they think it will get them somewhere. The john and hooker relationship is not one-sided and it’s more complicated than moral puritans realize.

The bottom line: take all the cautionary measures you would if you were making any other purchase. This is business and male introverts who remember this will get the basics of what they need, what has always been impossible to get within the hostile confines of their birth society.

Most important of all:

Ability to satisfy the basic male need for sex without being forced to subjugate oneself to the standards of the accepted orthodoxy. Sex no matter how uncool one’s hobbies are or how divergent one’s personality and interests. Sex without having to spend months learning courtship procedures all the other guys learned as a part of basic socialization. For introvert men, this means removal of the last great means of leverage society still has on their lives. It is a form of emancipation; the ability to simply bypass all the usual onerous steps and get to the truth and purpose of the matter.

Introvert Males and the Girl Conundrum

Posted by Gluon the Ferengi on November 18, 2009

Men with strongly Subtle tendencies typically have acute difficulties in relating to the opposite sex.

Women tend to be more socially oriented than men and this can be a huge obstacle for the least social of men who are also the least social human beings.

Relating to women is difficult because the highly social ‘girly girl’ is the polar opposite of a Subtle man. She is a creature of brightness, daylight, and fleeting passions while the Subtle man loves the safety of shadow, anonymity, and long term devotion.

If we envision a visible human spectrum, we could suppose we could find extremes in the infrared and ultraviolet. The most socially grounded females in the ultraviolet range, the least socially grounded men in the infrared. Ultraviolet females are a challenging personality for even the most social men when it comes to sustaining relationships, but their tendencies often seem to actually facilitate finding relationships in the first place. While there is most definitely intense competition amongst females, getting cut out of the gene pool entirely by competitors isn’t a huge concern like it is for men. An infrared male on the other hand has a huge disadvantage without any section of the female population to match his temperament. He lacks an asset, an edge possessed by all other males.

It is thus easy for an introvert man to come to the conclusion that he hasn’t the slightest thing in common with women and has very little place for them in his life.

On the other hand, a Subtle man is still a man. One of his strongest instincts is to desire a woman in his life. A life without sex and physical affection is difficult and lonely.

When it comes to girls, he is torn between the anger seeping from his lifetime of emotional scar tissue and his annoyingly unkillable hope for intimacy, love, and acceptance.

Thus we have the Girl Conundrum that is the torment of introverted guys everywhere.

Solution #1 – PUA

Many introvert men notice that they have never had success with women and they decide they need to change. Who do they need to become? The pickup artists who can seduce girls whenever they want, of course. The PUA community promises access to what was inaccessible, power instead of helplessness, and even vengeance intead of being trampled underfoot. All these together form an irresistible formula and indeed many gurus of pickup claim to have once been average frustrated guys with no ‘game.’ Indeed, many outcasts find a home in this place. This community has lots of philosophy and insight about human nature. It’s an exciting, stimulating place to be for bright, outcast men. There’s nothing to lose and no reason not to take as much from women as possible. After all, every introvert man has seen numerous times from his low ranking position how awfully, how truly condescendingly girls treat anyone they consider beneath them. He has no reason to offer any mercy or concessions. He would rather just be himself, but her unfortunately outdated packet of instincts precludes honesty. Against a lifetime of isolation and struggling for survival at the very bottom, the realpolitik philosophy of pickup makes sense.

Unfortunately it still doesn’t resolve the Girl Conundrum. Provided someone gets somewhere with PUA tactics, that’s definitely an improvement over isolation, but all the same issues remain. Reducing women down to a packet of instincts hardly fosters respect for them and yet he still has that desire for love and acceptance with a woman he respects and trusts. His desires remain in contradiction. Some introverted guys understandably relegate ‘loving relationships’ to the trash heap of other outright lies and unhelpful advice they’ve been given all their lives. Their anger is strong, but they would love nothing better than to learn that they’re mistaken. They remain torn between hate and hope.

I never got into the pickup community, but I definitely read some PUA works and benefited from them. For some people it takes the almost mechanical pragmatism of these books to awake from the reigning politically correct gender feminist garbage. It’s potentially a step in the right direction. Two out of four stars.

Solution #2 – MRA

I didn’t know these guys existed until I looked for them on the internet. A few years ago, I’d just returned from a foreign country where the girls had been much nicer and I was experiencing severe reverse culture shock in my home country. Surely someone had noticed that girls here were impossible! I entered search terms into google, probing for anyone out there who might have had the same thoughts. To my surprise there was a lively community of men who are tired of the contempt and disrespect that men regularly receive from women and the feminist establishment. Unsurprisingly, a good portion of these men seem to be introverts, who have seen mostly the very worst of the opposite sex.

For me, MRA writings have done more than any other source to get rid of cultural baggage and put maleness in its proper perspective. They have a broad focus and explain methodically with statistics how gender relations work in aggregate across entire societies. The system revealed by their analysis is one of stark injustice that stems from both the facts of biology and social expectations. MRA writers like to patiently and systematically point out all the ways that women are in fact privileged. One comes away from such reading with higher confidence and with lesser need to put women on a pedestal. However, this literature doesn’t endear women to the reader or bring one much closer to a loving relationship. Girl conundrum unsolved. Yet it is vital in teaching men how not to be exploited by the opposite sex. MRA writers provide a plan for independence from women, an end result they persuasively argue will benefit both sexes. This is not the solution to the problem, but it is most definitely a gateway and enabler. Four out of four stars.

Solution #3 – Use A Prostitute

Continued in the next post…

Introverts, Social Loyalty, and Social Immunity

Posted by Gluon the Ferengi on November 17, 2009

Builds Upon: Social Immunity
Leads To: The Most Precious Resource: Legitimacy

A Subtle person often grows up an outsider and never really bonds with their birth society. Not only do we lack commonality with the whole, we might very well also have feelings of resentment after years of complications arising from basic incompatibility. Such a Subtle person might wonder why on earth they should put their efforts into working hard for the sake of a collective for which they have no affinity. They see the daily grind and the question is ‘why?’ All that hard work to just to keep it going! Most people out there seem miserable and drained from the effort. Should we keep it going?

I’ve written my last posts about the Subtle perspective of social containment zones and coercion throughout the life cycle. Someone who fits in and is successfully socialized during youth is not going to think in this way. One who sees themself as a part of the larger society does not feel they are being coerced. Because of their group affinity, they are willing to participate in whatever is expected of them. Because of their deep bond to their group, they could hardly imagine deviating from everything that has defined them since birth. When a bond is that deep, there is no ‘why?’ to be asked. One might actually be incapable of conceiving of another social system and perhaps has never encountered one. When there’s just one way, what else could one do? Belonging could make them miserable or even get them killed but there quite simply is no other option. The birth society holds a monopoly on their social loyalty by default. Good or ill is just a roll of the dice.

For those who have never belonged, involvement with the orthodoxy continues because they have no choice. They feel helpless, confined, and coerced through all of life. Worse still, they must suffer silently while surrounded by people who can never understand them. Everyone has a basic human need to belong somewhere and those who are Incorrect must somehow find ways to live without. Someone Incorrect must live with the knowledge that they would be crushed beneath social censure if their true nature were discovered. The necessity of self-concealment makes for a life of loneliness and insecurity. The nonsensical and irrational aspects of a society that everyone else accepts without question seem glaring errors to one who has never belonged…

Beyond coercion, why should one be loyal to a social organization that has yielded alienation and suffering?

Why should one hesitate to leave it if there were ever a better option?

When one grows up receiving mostly negative reinforcement from social institutions, from authority figures, from one’s parents and peers why be loyal to their ‘reality’?

Why continue a tradition that only brought misery into one’s life?

Why would one ‘contribute to society’ if they weren’t forced to? Isn’t perpetuating a hostile society against one’s interests?

Although the practical and economic reasons are obvious one might ask on the philosophical level: On what grounds is a society one is born into by mere accident entitled to one’s labor and loyalty? Angsty teenagers everywhere have a point when they say “I didn’t choose to be born” We didn’t choose to be born and yet every one of us is treated as though we signed some kind of contract before we entered the world. We all get the responsibility without any of the power.

It is important to consider to consider this philosophical level because of the implications. Since birth is an accident in which we had no part, then our birth society can have no special or legitimate claim on our lives. Many people rationalize, “I couldn’t have survived without this society, so now I(you) owe it.” The angsty teenager points out however “I did not ask to exist, I can’t help that I’ve been existed in a form that requires other people for survival, so how can I be held responsible for all the costs my existence has incurred?” If one must actively choose to take out a loan or use a credit card to be held accountable for a debt, on what does a birth society base its demands for obedience and loyalty?

What it boils down to: Without the successful acquisition of deep social affinity in one’s early years, only naked coercion remains to enforce one’s compliance and loyalty to a society. Under such circumstances, it is not only desirable to secede, but ethical. To continue to bow to tyranny dooms the next generation of Incorrect persons to the same fate.

How does one secede then from a body that is all encompassing?

One does it by using a given society’s resources in one’s own anti-social interests. To ironically use money, the material substance of social approval and influence to escape the demands of the society.

To carve out a personal domain by achieving Social Immunity is the first step in bringing about a new ‘reality’ that could ultimately incorporate more than one person. Otherwise, one remains stuck on the same treadmill that seems to define the lives of everyone else. A treadmill that seems there to keep people occupied and too busy to really think about life until it’s too late. For a true introvert it seems there must be a better way to live, but the demands of survival leave limited time to think about it. For an Incorrect person, no treasure is so precious as time to stop and think. Never until Social Immunity has been achieved can this treasure be harvested without constant interruption and interference.

Social Immunity

Posted by Gluon the Ferengi on November 13, 2009

Leads To: Breaking the Iron Law: A Game of Social Arbitrage,
Breaking the Iron Law: Developing Public Resources

In the beginning of life our family/guardians control our lives

A little later, school controls our lives

After school, a boss controls our lives

After retirement, the curators at a ‘senior home’ control our lives

All during that while, a host of peers in our same situation expose us to mass social expectations of what to buy, what to like, how to behave, who to associate with.

Every small child dreams of being a ‘grown up’ but they do not yet understand that they may never have any more control over their lives than they do as an infant. In fact, they may very well have less. Small children can go and play with their toys nearly any time they desire. Adults might be able to play with their toys on Saturdays if they’re lucky.

If we ever find time to stop and think(most of us won’t), the entire social experience seems like a raw deal. Surely, there’s the possibility of something smarter, something more fulfilling than a life moving slavishly from one containment zone to the next until the day we finally keel over and die.

Anyone who has ever stopped to think has probably imagined Social Immunity, a complete escape from the standard containment zones and the gravitational pull of economic necessity that keeps us within them.

To gain the ability to choose the peers who form our social environment and how we associate with them.

To be able to live life without a stultifying repetitious routine. To orchestrate a day by one’s desires rather than the schedule of some monolithic organization that can care nothing for the individuals that comprise it.

To be able to enjoy all the wonderful things societies produce without having to give a lifetime of subservience in return.

To view all of the swarming mass of society as if from an airplane. To have the luxury of being able to regard all desperate human struggles taking place below with a sense of distance and detachment.

Many if not most people would accuse such a dreamer of being fanciful, self indulgent, and selfish because such concepts are antithetical to ‘reality.’

Yet a sense of lack of control over one’s life is one of the greatest sources of emotional turmoil and stress. People who live under chronic stress experience a significant lowering in life satisfaction and life expectancy. They have far more illnesses and health problems. People often point to smoking as one of the deadliest habits, yet it pales next to feelings of helplessness and alienation. Such feelings drain the human spirit and even the will to live.

I once read of a senior home that experienced a massive drop in the deaths of their residents when they changed one simple thing:

They gave the old people menus from which they could choose their meals instead of simply thrusting standardized trays of food at them.

This one small change gave helpless elderly people a sense of control and purpose in their lives and with it the will to live another day.

Seen in such a way, is the human craving for Social Immunity greedy and selfish or is it a desperate human hope for the most basic things that make life worth living?

Societies must constantly produce in order to avoid being engulfed by rival societies, but why couldn’t even a small collective of socially immune individuals outcompete a multitude of those who are drained and subjugated?

Introvert Survival: Reducing Your Profile

Posted by Gluon the Ferengi on November 13, 2009

If you’ve ever seen an oil painting or engraving of two men with dueling pistols, you might have noticed that they have both turned their bodies sideways with their arms tucked behind them so that they might be as small a target as possible.

All too often the Subtle person is in conflict with their society and finds that they are an enormous target. The accepted order has many means of attacking and coercing them. The situation seems all but hopeless.

If one would have any measure of independence from the mass society’s arbitrary standards, it is necessary to reduce your profile.

Avoid the tragedy of the lords

Most people try to appear as high in social status as possible by purchasing the highest social artifacts they can afford. This means buying a huge house, fancy cars, fancy clothes that keep one perpetually in debt. The consumer of today can look at Polynesian cultures that attached social status to gigantic stone wheels or towering ancestor statues and marvel at the absurdity of it all. Yet they remain oblivious that their own culture’s status artifacts are just another version of those very things. All their hoarded belongings are just a Yap stone wheel weighing them down.
For the Loud person, the drive to social competition and fear of social competitors simply become more acute with every dollar earned. The more they earn, the more they must appear as though they earned it. The wealthier they are, the higher the wages they must pay their wealth.
History is filled with kings who taxed their peasants as much as possible. Ironically, such a despot is no longer necessary. Today’s consumers continue to hand over money until the brink of starvation without any person or government coercing them. The mindless tyrant of mass social expectations has become more effective in stripping people of their resources than governments ever were.
Only if one separates from the mass culture can there be any hope of living one’s own life.

Financial liabilities tie you to the whims of society

Once you have mortgages, leases, and a car that depreciates as soon as it leaves the lot, you are committed.
Once these enormous commitments have been taken on, you can’t move anywhere, you can’t quit your job without going broke. You tell people you are ‘making a living’ but in reality you are hanging by a thread. Under such circumstances, you do not have the luxury of self determination. You have to do what the accepted order tells you to do so you can make it to the next paycheck.

The more dependent you are on society to give you money, the more vulnerable you are. High vulnerability makes you a very large, very easy target should you ever transgress.

Establish multiple passive sources of income

Investing in a steady, dependable portfolio and establishing side businesses establishes alternate, independent sources of income.
Money comes from these sources whether your boss likes you or not, whether or not you accidentally pissed off a co-worker at the company party, whether or not you are working for anyone.
The more money that comes for alternate sources, the less leverage society has against you, the smaller the target you present.
The dream is to reach a point where you no longer have to care what anyone thinks.
At this point, you may walk the streets, watching everyone else hurrying to their workplaces for the sake of their survival and realize that you alone of all those thousands have achieved freedom.

This is Social Immunity

Extrovert Critic: “You’ll Never Get Laid If You ____”

Posted by Gluon the Ferengi on July 13, 2009

How many times has any male introvert nerd been told “If you like (DandD, klingons, magic cards, x…) you’ll never get any girls”?
The aim of this criticism is to point out the superiority of the accepted orthodoxy over the divergent path. The argument is that “You will not be rewarded with social approval for your actions, therefore you are foolish, wrong, and irrational.”
After a lifetime of receiving such criticism and mockery, it becomes easy to start accepting such views as truth. However, the way people and societies work is considerably more complex than extrovert critics care to realize:

Girls aren’t usually interested in dungeons and dragons but neither do they tend to be terribly interested in the intricacies of professional sports, fighting wars, or entering blazing buildings. A pro athlete, soldier, or firefighter tends to attract women not because women share their interests but because of their:
-high social status
-high level of congruency with the orthodoxy.

Many women in the West see sci fi/fantasy fandom as a negative trait because such interests are associated with low social standing and low levels of congruency with the larger society. The general perception is that Nerddom is a zone for beta males who can’t compete in the ‘real’ society.

Thus, if D and D repels the typical cheerleader or sorority girl, it is not because of any inherent property of the game itself. It is about the social meaning attached to the game by any given society. There is no inherent reason, as extrovert critics love to assert, that nerd games ought to be unappealing to women.
The extrovert critic represents the limited perspective of but one of the world’s many societies:

South Korea is a country that treats real time strategy as a professional sport, the players enjoy a great deal of prestige and have no problems with opposite sex. One top protoss player named Bisu is renowned for his good looks and has countless adoring female fans. The players get supplied with pretty ‘booth girls’ who serve them drinks or take care of their needs during the course of a match. The studio audiences at these starcraft matches are composed of people of all ages and contain a high percentage of women.

Thus, if Dungeons and Dragons were on national television and the football team was an underground movement of social outcasts, the roles would be effectively reversed. It is simply a matter of social values.

Thus, if outcasts formed a cohesive new order with their own values installed as the orthodoxy, one need not worry about girls. There would be plenty of prestige and social congruency attached to previously derided and undesirable activities.
Yet another aspect of absolution!

Unity Without Uniformity: The Implications of Wikis

Posted by Gluon the Ferengi on July 13, 2009

The internet has resulted in forms of collective human association without any individual being crushed by the collective.

One form of such an association has come to be called a ‘wiki.’ In the implementation of wiki projects one sees the result of a collaborative effort in which each participant was an independent agent. There are no deadlines(other than death itself), there are no mandatory office hours. One can contribute when they want, how they want, if they want.

In terms of accuracy and quality of content, wikis compare favorably against traditional encyclopedias. In terms of sheer volume, Wikis can cover a much larger variety of content than an encyclopedia ever could and keep constantly up to date all the while.

Such a high quality public resource results from the efforts of many individuals who never even meet one another. A wiki is a product of an environment with very low friction of association.

As such it enjoys certain advantages over a highly regulated structure:
-People acting on their own don’t have to be motivated or compelled in any way. None of the actors are formal associates in any way, thus there is no reason to try to ‘get the most’ out of the labor of each individual. If one lazy person leaves an article half complete, someone else will finish it. There is no urgency because such an organization passively collects contributions as a leaf collects rays from the sun.

-Those who contribute tend to do so in their area of expertise. Individuals know more about their strengths and their interests than any manager ever could. A non-interventionist system results in everyone working on what they’re best at, what they most enjoy. When personnel distribute themselves on tasks according to their interests and strengths, standards of quality are maximized. Not only is higher efficiency achieved, the cost of an authoritarian manager is eliminated.

The whole thing causes me to reflect.
It becomes necessary to have a hierarchy and highly specific goals with deadlines when running a business or a state.
But when organizations with the loosest of ties regularly churn out an outstanding free product I have to consider:
Compelling, allotting, scheduling, and assigning people to tasks while accounting for every second of available work time per employee is an extremely maintenance intensive process. At a certain point the cost of governing one’s employees must exceed the benefits of governing them.

Minimizing friction of association seems to be the obvious means of improving effectiveness.
A society or organization founded on compulsion and uniformity is still attractive because such an approach ensures a certain outcome. However, such a highly structured structured system must consume a large portion of its output just to keep itself running. Such a system has little potential to outperform what is expected of it. It performs very like a computer program, doing only exactly what it is told.

As for the possibility of a cohesive Subtle organization that minimizes friction of associaton, consider the attributes of Subtle persons.
They are:
-Knowledgeable, skilled, imaginative, critical thinkers.
-Introvert outcasts who have little stake in any existing order. This makes them highly versatile agents who can serve their function any place, any time, and under any circumstances.
-Highly accustomed to functioning as independent self-motivated agents. Minimal if any maintenance or supervision required.
-Highly desirous of a niche that satisfies their basic human need to belong.
-Often unemployed or unusually low in the employment hierarchy for their ability level. No one is presently making good use of their potential, nor is anyone likely to do so. They are lying around in a salvage yard, readily available to anyone who wants them.

The trick is finding them within the vast orthodoxies that have swallowed them up.(or in which they’ve hidden themselves!)

Why Introverted Nerds Like Fantasy and Sci Fi

Posted by Gluon the Ferengi on July 12, 2009

Builds Upon: The Anthropology of Nerd Societies: The Formation of New Group Identities Within Western Industrial Society

It’s perfectly Ok and respectable to have seen some trek and wars. However, you’re crossing way over the line if you know who Salacious Crumb is or know just how Shaka felt when the walls fell.
The new Battlestar Galactica is borderline respectable because of its general lack of aliens and elaborate makeup. You’ve probably gone too far though if you know the model number for each of the skinjobs.
You might possibly be able to pass yourself off as a semi-acceptable citizen even if you watch Stargate.
If you’re into firefly, B5, or Earth final conflict, forget it. It’s too late to save you.
If you:
-Consider yourself a member of clan Malkavian
-Have killed an ancient netch with the fork of horripilation
-Know the significance of the phrase ‘hello sailor’ or have been eaten by grues
-Have ever saved against death
-Know that every point of S after 3= -1 to armor save
-Have ever put a saproling token into play or accumulated poison counters
-Could swear Washington D.C. was founded in 4000 B.C. and believe Elvis has existed since ancient times
-Know the significance of the line “My shoes are too tight and I have forgotten how to dance.”
-Can sing ‘the man they call Jayne’ by heart.

then you have become indescribable in the horrific Lovecraftian sense of the word.
Yet there are lower levels still…

Some moderate exposure to fantasy and sci-fi is deemed to be an ordinary part of pop culture, but there’s a certain point where you’ve crossed the Rubicon and entered into Nerddom.

In Nerddom a movie, show, book, or computer game goes beyond mere entertainment. It becomes a subject of scholarly zeal and nationalistic devotion. In Nerddom one:
-Memorizes geographical features on fictional maps.
-Memorizes the specs of fictional weapons and vehicles.
-Masters a large body of spoken or written material to the point where they can quote from it at will.
-Knows details that are not actually divulged in the original work.
-Knows the customs, histories, or languages of fictional peoples…

To those who live on the surface, these behaviors are completely irrational and bizarre.
Acceptable people wonder why anyone would be so fervent about such obscure information.
Obscurity and exclusivity is precisely the point! Far from being insane, it’s a ritual of distinguishing those who belong to Nerddom from those who belong on the surface of society.
When people do not identify with the culture they were born into, surely it is no stretch of the imagination that they would invent a new culture.
Every culture has its lore and mythology. The culture of Nerddom is no different. A denizen of the surface might say ‘OMG WTF, why would anyone ever learn that?’
One could just as easily ask the same thing of conventional pop culture with its emphasis on frivolous details from the personal lives of countless ‘celebrity’ strangers.
In any given society, shared lore is hugely important. All those small details help bring members closer together while simultaneously keeping outsiders in their place. The small details are difficult to learn properly unless one is genuinely enthusiastic about the values held by the group. It is a means of quickly filtering out impostors.

Among surface dwellers, nerdly scholarship is at best regarded as an amusing and pitiable curiosity. At worst, it is seen as a symptom of derangement and an attack on traditional society.
Those who belong notice a pattern:
Nerddom attracts lots of people who just can’t seem to fit in.
This observation only reinforces the disgust of Accepted observers. Nerddom is the place where rejects go and hide from ‘reality.’

Why does this phenomenon exist?
It ought to be obvious!

When one grows up as a misfit and shares few interests with their peers, one undergoes regular bouts of social censure from an early age.
All one gets from the ‘real world’ of the conventional social environment is negative reinforcement. The every day experience is one of alienation and humiliation.

Why then is it a surprise then that those who are rejected should turn to fictional worlds?! Fictional realities in which all the traits that merit rejection are accepted. Fictional worlds far away from the order that judges and condemns.

These fictional worlds are an escape and separation from a hostile society, but that is only the beginning.
Having been thrown away like garbage by one’s birth culture, it follows that one ought to actively distance oneself from the conventions of one’s oppressors. By doing this one moves from a land and culture associated with shame and loneliness to new lands that promote pride and serve as a means of group bonding with others who have been cast out.
Before long, you have a black market of social belonging operating under the surface of the ‘Legal’ order. I suspect a lot of conventional resentment comes from the fact that the orthodoxy’s monopoly on acceptance and rejection has been effectively broken. Seeing Fracture in progress is inherently disturbing to those who believe there is only one Correct social order.

Far from being crazy or a curiosity, Nerddom is the understandable easily predictable result of the present system. Why on Earth would someone reviled by their fellow Earthlings stay on Earth when it is so easy to emigrate?

To sum it all up, emigration to Nerddom is a means of:

-Declaring independence from a hostile society. Unable to succeed and too isolated to bring any change, the best solution is to secede from a harsh and abusive organization.
-Including those who fail to identify with the conventional ways
-Excluding one’s persecutors.
-Finding pride and belonging when one’s birth culture gave only shame and exclusion
-Escaping to a place where it is not necessary to constantly be on guard. It is a way of releasing accumulated tension and stress.

In time, what started as a temporary shelter becomes more of a home than the birth culture ever was. In a sense, all of those fictional worlds are more real, more genuine than ‘reality’ ever was. From a shameful beginning characterized by being a sin, absolution follows.

Introvert Survival: Handling Extrovert Interrogations

Posted by Gluon the Ferengi on June 25, 2009

When a Loud person asks you a question it is best to give a quick, snappy, truthful answer.
Directly stonewalling or displaying reluctance to answer personal questions from someone you don’t trust yet is sure to get very negative reactions in the workplace and other social environments.
Ironically, the ‘friendly’ questions that many extroverts ask are only friendly if you answer them to their satisfaction and do it quickly.

When someone asks a series of questions, what you learn from one question leads to the next question. So be truthful, but brief; snappy, yet vague. Just neglect to give them anything that would allow them to continue inquiring.
I needn’t be the whole truth. The answers only need be something that can be construed as true.

The key is that short, vague, honest answers are boring answers. Most extroverts assume that someone who gives a boring first impression is in fact boring. 90% of them will leave you alone if you can convince them you are socially acceptable but boring.
The main thing is to stop the questioning quickly. Once they start asking detailed questions about the latest pop stars, tv shows, fashion trends, sports cars, and athletes, the game’s up.
Once they start giving you stories about their favorite experiences at night clubs and other social venues, they will start to notice that you aren’t responding with your own equally thrilling anecdotes.
At some point they pause in between their sentences and say “Wow, you’re really quiet.”

Unfortunately, there’s the 10% of truly Loud people who don’t go away no matter how uniform you can make yourself. Worst of all, there’s authority figures and important people to whom you can’t afford to give any kind of bad impression.

When a Loud person with power over your life or your job starts asking ‘friendly’ questions, the unmitigated truth could be devastating. Boring answers could cost you their good graces. There’s no easy way out of this one, which is just one reason why introverts aren’t usually going to rise to the top in an organization. It takes the touch of a social expert to figure out what the lead extrovert wants to hear and how he or she wants to hear it.

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