Bad Behaviour is Morally Bad Behaviour, Not Evolved Bad Behaviour

My disagreement with the Red Pill is not over the facts of women’s behaviour. Lord knows it was a relief all those years ago to find out I Wasn't The Only One who saw what I saw.

The Red Pill view is that solipsism, selective hypo-agency and hypergamy are evolutionary hard-wired behaviours and that women are no more responsible for acting that way than beavers are for building dams. What I see as reprehensible opportunism, it sees as, well, sneezing. The problem with this is that evolution, which is concerned with DNA modifications, does not affect cultural behaviours, which are not only not determined by DNA but are almost completely independent of it. I’ve discussed this in a previous post, and to summarise the conclusion

Because sexual selection has no correlation with evolutionary advantage, contemporary human behaviour is not the result of thousands of years of evolutionary fine-tuning. There is no evolutionary rationale for your neighbour’s cockolding wife: she has no idea whether the Bad Boy impregnating her has more dominant genes than her faithful provider Beta husband. That’s just evo-porn for the masses. Hypergamy, cuckolding, testing for social dominance and all the rest may help determine present advantage, but have no evolutionary efficacy beyond chance. DNA doesn’t work like that.

So let’s de-theorise some of this. ‘Solipsism’ in this context means two things: first, that seeing other people’s actions as if they acted for the same reasons one would if one were in that situation; second, only giving weight to one's own reasons and purposes, while the needs and purposes of other people are irrelevant. The solipsist is the only person who matters in their world. In plain English, this is a mixture of selfishness, projection and lack of experience and understanding.

‘Selective hypo-agency’ is simply a rationalisation tactic. They did something bad or ill-judged? They ‘made a mistake’, someone else was to blame, they were distracted, they didn’t have all the information they needed, sometimes good people do bad things, and so on. But only when it’s to their advantage.

‘Hypergamy’ is the chronic feeling that one could have done better and still could. In marketing-speak, it’s buyer’s regret. If only they had waited, they might have had a chance at someone better. Buyer’s regret is caused by a continuing review of what’s on the market. The only way to avoid it is to stop looking once one has made one's choice. But the hypergamist can’t. Because they doesn’t trust their decision, and that’s because they doesn’t trust themsleves to make a good judgement about partners, or probably anything else. Hypergamy comes from a chronic insecurity.

Selfishness, rationalisation, chronic insecurity: these sound like personality flaws and moral failings, and are especially linked to Cluster B’s. It’s a mistake is to look for an explanation for these flaws and failings. That would play right into the hypoagency trap. They can’t help it because reasons and you should accept the results. Whether Cluster B traits have a basis in genetics is morally irrelevant: the actor has legal agency, and gets moral agency as a consequence.

My view that these are moral failings rather than evolved universal behaviours leads me to commend men to step away from the crazy, and also to the view that a majority of women will not consistently show these behaviours. That would seem to contradict the Red Pill position, which holds that All Women Are Like That, but it doesn’t quite.

It’s one thing to say that Not All Women Have Personality Disorders, and another to say that a lot of women will start acting out if their partner fails to meet some basic standards of attention-provision, security-provision, and immediate, direct feedback.

That acting out is not evolved behaviour, it’s immaturity. An adult has the self-awareness and honesty to explain what is wrong, and the tact to do so in a manner that avoids shaming and blaming. At least that's what the relationship counsellors hold up as the ideal.

Adult behaviour is a lot easier when there’s little or no neurotic emotional investment in the relationship. If you don’t have any, or only very low-level, neuroses, all your relationships will be adult, transactional, and risk-managed, and you won’t be married, as marriage fails the risk-management test. To be married at all means there’s a neurosis there somewhere just waiting to turn her into a facsimile of a Cluster B in full effect, and him into a passable imitation of a sulking kid.

In practical terms, there’s no difference between how I and the Red Pill see life for a married man. He needs to keep up the attention-provision, teasing, dread, security-provision and feedback, informed by telepathy as to what is needed at what time.

Sounds like a ton of work for very little reward to me. That has to do with my history as an ACoA / Alcoholic / Addict and what it means for my hormone soup. I don’t get the good hormones, and I get way more of the bad hormones, than other people get from those complicated interactions. It’s all push away and no pull towards. I’m guessing at what other men feel and how it works for them, but whatever it is, from my point of view, it must be one hell of a powerful drug.

That's why I feel the way I do about it all. Doesn't affect the fact that Bad Behaviour isn't explained by evolution. It's explained by present, imminent, neuroses, and a decision to behave badly.