GENIUS FORUMS

There is a great deal of money being made selling this sort of material, and Franco is just one of many. I read some pretty in-depth material, originally written in French and then translated into Spanish, that I thought was actually better than Franco's stuff, and that is mostly where I formed my opinion.

The whole genre really begins with Ovid, and so is really a part of the Roman ideal, the 'pagan' ideal, which Christianity struggled so hard against. The whole idea and practice of seduction is pretty much counter to the whole (Christian) idea of finding a nice, chaste girl, settling down performing one's Christian duty as a decent, upright citizen, and working in the direction of elevation of one's character and community, amen. The doctrines of seduction that are coming out now, in my opinion, stem more than anything else from the pornography industry.

But yes, the core doctrines, which are cynical, will of course get modified, softened, sweetened, pc-corrected, tabulated, correlated---whatever it takes to sell it to as many people as possible. The blog you linked to seems the beginning of that process. However, the core doctrines of seduction lay it out on the line, without mincing words.
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It's all rather funny in my case. I have likely 'been' with as many as a hundred different women, more than likely more, in all sorts of different arrangements. Desiring women, wanting women---I see clearly now---was a branch and a function of my spiritual life. It was a hunt and a chase but always on 'spiritual terms'. It had to have an elevated element, it could never have been merely base, and yet it was about a form of seduction. Meeting and having relationships, or spiritual romances as the case often was, was the means that I felt 'Gods' presence, and the means through which God communicated to me. (I am not joking) Of course this is all later evolutions of the romantic ideal, but in my case it had other strains there too---shamanic, 'individualistic', even transcendental. It was never really about the other person, it was about me and 'God', the spirit, 'the owner of destiny'. Now that I think about it, it is a really odd way to have relationships with people, with women. In a sense it was acutely selfish. In another, the best way to go. Very realistic. (You could call it, then, 'chauvinistic'). I longed for women, and I found them, but the last thing on my mind---the very last and the most remote thing---was settling down with them, establishing a relationship in typical terms. So, I never did.

You could say (and I do sometimes say) that 'I wasted opportunities'. Another interpretation is that my essential and core interest was my own spiritual life. I use that term in a far wider sense than it seems to be used here.

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Ni ange, ni bête

Lol.

It's true that I have had a few personal problems in recent years that have made it impossible for me to even interact with women. In that time though, I was so messed up (and isolated - it's a lot easier to be without desire when you're not around the objects of your desire) that sex and the desire for female company was the furtherest thing from my mind anyway. It's only now, as I overcome those problems and start to again engage with society, that my desires and yearnings return in full force. And yes, it is a potent experience. I don't think that "obsession" is the right word, but you're on the right track that it's something that I put a lot of value on. I'm thinking, though, of trying to get a job, and if I do that then there'll be limitations on the amount of energy I'll be able to put into "obsessing" over it.



I won't deny that I'm inexperienced. As I've written elsewhere, I reject the label "desperate", although as I wrote above, I do place a lot of value on "these matters". As for "sex-obsessed", well that's just not true. I enjoy it when it happens but I don't spend an excessive amount of time thinking about it - some yes, but not enough to qualify as obsessiveness.



Oh please, David. What proportion of my posts reference sex? A very small minority. I discuss a wide range of topics on this forum. My main contributions have been debates and discussions with people like Kevin, Dan, yourself, Sapius and Sam on issues as varied as enlightenment as no-self, whether the Totality can be conceptualised, lucid dreaming and the nature of consciousness. Are you seriously telling me that you're considering banning me for sharing a little bit of what's currently on my mind in an appropriate context? Please bear in mind that I didn't start this discussion on romance/sex - it was DF's quotation that instigated it - I just fed the fire because it's something which I'm currently thinking about.



Fair call - inclusive only applied to the way in which he encouraged people to touch one another to show that they care, and his advice to not spend time with certain women is certainly not inclusive. Other than that, why shouldn't he encourage people to take care of their own wants and needs as well as those of their (potential) partners? Personally I try to be more inclusive than that and wouldn't reject a woman's company merely because she was emotionally cold and distant, but I would certainly prefer to spend time with a woman who was warm and affectionate.

Yes, that's one way that I look at it too, except that for me I wouldn't say:



I couldn't feel comfortable in a spiritual romantic relationship unless she was getting something at a similar (or at least reasonable) level out of it as what I was getting. I'd just feel rotten if she wasn't. It would be a mild form of the self-disgust that holds me back (along with the obvious rational reasons) from rape. Are you saying that that's what you did, or was it more that she was getting something great out of it too but that you couldn't have cared less about that?

Edit: nevermind, my question/scenario isn't very well considered. To have been with you in the first place a woman must have considered that she was getting something reasonable out of it, and if/when she decides that she no longer is, then she's free to move on.



But you're in one now, right?



Is it possible that you could have maintained one or more long term relationships that were themselves spiritual?

It's there in everything you write, both directly and indirectly. Even when you are discussing pure philosophy, it's done in a way that safe-guards or enhances your attractiveness to women. Everything that comes out of your mouth is distorted by that perspective.

I also hold you largely responsible for the deterioration of the forum's standards over the past few months, more or less turning it into a ladies' salon where gossip and mundane observations dominated. So at the moment, I'm not all that well-disposed to you.

It is clear that you don't have any real interest or empathy for the values of this forum, so I really think you should go elsewhere. I'm sure there are plenty of sites where you can thrash out your obsession with women and relationships to your heart's content. I don't see why we should continue to accept you inflicting it upon us here.

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Genius Realms

Always, I am forced to return to the essential observation, and the main underpinning of the forum: puritanical rejection of 'the world'. All your mental and philosophical armaments are gathered together, are arrayed along the frontier, and you will fight to the last drop of blood to defend your personal choice as to what constitutes 'spirituality', what constitutes the more elevated domains of human thought and thinking, what are the most important values for all humankind, and in with what specific ethics one has to have in order to realize these goals. But, when you look at the individual who is defending that choice, that neurosis, it is pretty much the same person: a boyish, isolated, unstable, over-intellectual, over-certain (to the point of hubris and mental imbalance), Calvinistic youngster who most likely has really never experienced enough of life to be even able to reject it, in such absolute terms.
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Laird wrote:

"I couldn't feel comfortable in a spiritual romantic relationship unless she was getting something at a similar (or at least reasonable) level out of it as what I was getting. I'd just feel rotten if she wasn't. It would be a mild form of the self-disgust that holds me back (along with the obvious rational reasons) from rape. Are you saying that that's what you did, or was it more that she was getting something great out of it too but that you couldn't have cared less about that?"

The key to all this is in the use of the word 'romantic'. Even without knowing it, the word is linked to ideas and ideals that are part and parcel of ourselves, our culture, our literary and philosophical traditions, our modern institutions. In order to understand the polarities that appear time and time again on this funny little forum, I think you'd (one would) have to go back over the Romantic ideal, the romantic movement, and understand what it proposes, what ideas informed it, what its effect has been on modern relationships, on our modern institutions. You see, I would answer the questions you propose quite differently, because I can speak through and beyond the romantic ideal, and am not limited to it, it is not a Law that binds me, not a group of chains that determines, like in some 'Court of Love' (see 'court of love' on the page), what I must and must not do. In all of what you write, Laird, you seem always to idealize from the platform of what is 'right' and 'wrong', and I'll opine that too you are pretty substantially informed by romantic political notions. That is not a criticism, necessarily, but the more that a person understands what, in fact, informs them (consciously as opposed to unconsciously) the better that we can actually represent who we are.

I assert that just as you (and others here, and me to a certain extent) give voice to romantic idealisms (as defined in the 1700s and 1800s), that the clever, solo-masturbators of this boy's-club forum are also deeply captivated by romantic idealism. Ha! Ha! Ha! Their romantic idealism is just in that stage where it turns inward, where it recoils in pain from the senselessness of the outer game. Mostly, what I am proposing is far more classical, and somewhat more sober, more balanced, more 'realistic', because I have lived in each pole and (feel I) know the advantage and disadvantage of each.

Laird, from a seducer's point of view, what you have written above is way off. The seducer's ideal is to storm another person like sacking a foreign city. You don't ask permission to love, you walk right in and take it. Women do not expect you to 'play fair' and if the truth be told they secretly hold you in contempt when you 'play fair'. If anything, most of them would happily sacrifice the game played fair for the exquisite tribulations and soaring emotionalism of the marauder-lover who roars in on his Harley and says, 'Get on bitch, we're leavin' this dirt-bag city behind'!

(I'll stop now and let the Puritan Squad have their say. It is after all their forum, their supervised road to the Absolute!)

PS: I think it might be a good idea that each of us, in our personal profile, list the medications that have been prescribed to keep us more or less sane, say like a by-line that appears at the bottom of each post. Also, a line indicating if we actually work for a living and 'earn our keep' or if we depend on the state. To me, these are very important bits of information when I analyse the person who is discussing 'enlightenment' and making sweeping generalizations about spiritual life, life, relationships, etc.

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Ni ange, ni bête

What is it that you are trying to achieve here Alex?

When I accepted this Mission, they said I was to:

"...Enter their domain, captivate them, charm them, beat them, bless them, butter them up but best them, attach hooks to determining sub-structures in the cells of their brains; intone the sacred syllables that produced the indescribably rich effervescent sensations of Pure Bliss, and pull them all along by the scruffs of their necks to the Promised Land"...

I have been more or less upfront with all that.

Next question!

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Ni ange, ni bête

Wow, you really think so? That's not what some women think. The woman that I'm currently in an internet relationship with stopped reading my posts to GF because she found them (and the responses) too combative. So she at least didn't believe that I was enhancing my attractiveness.



I don't think that that's at all fair. Go back and read the threads that I've started recently, in particular the "Does it matter or not?" thread. There's plenty of substance and very little gossip. As for whether my observations are mundane or not I suppose that that's in the eye of the beholder. I at least don't think that it's a fair comment and other people also seem to have found them worthwhile.



Oh, but it's fine for you to thrash out your obsession with crushing femininity without opposition? I find your chauvinism objectionable and I don't see why I should sit by and let you have at it without expressing a contrary viewpoint. Do you believe in freedom of speech and the dialectical process or not?

As for not having empathy for the values of this forum, you're absolutely right, but can't you take criticism and use it as an opportunity to show the superiority of your views? Often a subject is most clearly elucidated under challenge.

So you consider yourself our Saviour then. That's what I thought.



Have you ever been anally penetrated by another man's penis?

And yet you surely have standards of behaviour. There are some ways that you would never treat a woman, right? And some ways in which you prefer to treat her? How is this essentially any different to being bound to laws?



Yeah, I do have fairly firm beliefs about what's right and what's wrong, subject to change as I learn, and yes, some of those beliefs could be described as romantic notions I suppose, but it's not so much that I'm bound to some set of politics that I simply adopted wholesale - I form my own views of correct behaviour mostly through introspection but also through contemplating the words and actions of other people.



Perhaps you're right, but I don't have that marauder instinct in me. It would take a lot of acting (and more creative will than I believe that I have) for me to play that role. I seem to get on OK as "the nice but independent and assertive guy", so I guess I'll stick with that for now, and just hope that I'm not secretly being held in contempt.



I'm not going to add it to my profile, but I'll share what I'm willing to with you in this post. I am on medication, and it does perform a real and serious function of keeping me out of hospital, to which I've been admitted more times in the last decade than I care to admit. I wish to disclose neither my medication nor the nature of my diagnosis however.

I don't work for a living - I'm on a "disability support pension" (DSP), which I became eligible for after my stays in hospital. Nowadays given that the medication keeps me generally well I could potentially return to work, however I now suffer not so much from my "psychiatric" condition but from lack of energy and feelings of physical weakness and periodic fatigue. Anyway as I wrote in a previous post, I'm considering returning to work regardless, mostly because I feel guilty to be taking without giving back, but also partly because the extra money would be nice - I have a mortgage to pay off that I'm made slow progress on so far. Time will tell whether I actually follow through and get a job. Prior to the problems that led to my hospitalisation I worked primarily as a computer programmer, but also variously whilst travelling as a fruit-picker, barkeep/storeperson/waiter/cleaner (in an outback pub/hotel/store/restaurant) and data-entry operator.

In terms of relationships I've had a small few opportunities and could probably be married by now if I'd taken up one of them (she married the guy that I relinquished her to), but in the final analysis I've turned them all down, some for reasons that I can't even fully understand in hindsight - feelings of inadequacy and non-entitlement perhaps. I'm slowly overcoming those feelings that romantic pairings are something that I will (should) only ever observe other people engage in, and never engage in myself.

Haha, jeez Jason, why don't you ask Alex what you really want to know? Lol.

What is it that you are trying to achieve here Jason?

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Ni ange, ni bête

Are you really that dull?



Of course. But it's become a waste of time in this case. There is just too much of a divide between your mentality and ours to cause any real dialectical sparks to occur. There is a limit to how much interest adolescence can provide.

You've had your time here and now it is time for change. The forum needs some renewal and this is a part of it.

I'll give you a few days to wrap up your affairs here, but then I expect you to do the honourable thing and move on.

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Genius Realms

Your labeling is selective and meaningless. Does your rejection of my world make you a "puritan"? If not, why not?

I can just see you wagging your finger at Jesus and accusing him of being boyish and over-certain, telling him that he is inexperienced and misunderstands human nature. "It's all very well thinking you're the son of God, but your absolutism is a clear indication of your neurosis and Calvinist upbringing!"



Never been on any medications. On the pension for refusing to work.

Yourself?

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Genius Realms

Drug free (so long as you don't count Glucosamine), state supported loser.

Hey, this is fun.

No prescriptions. Nine-to-five wage slave.

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Good Citizen Carl

A clearer understanding of the poster, just like you.

In return: I'm not on, nor have I ever been on, psychiatric medication and I receive government money.

What does whether or not someone takes medication have to do with judging the quality of their thoughts? Having a pattern of substantially dysfunctional thoughts when off medication is a criterion for going on medication. Next are you going to ask for a pedigree? A reading of our DNA? History of our nutritional intake? These things go into the making of our thoughts as much as whether or not we are on medication.

I was not on medication when I joined GF, but I'm currently on Prozac. I am not on government subsidy.

Elizabeth, my idea is that some of the ideas that are expressed here, some of the ethical recommendations (sacrificing relationships for example, puritanical sexual attitudes, excessive emphasis on 'logic' as a means to navigate life, extremist philosophy, etc.) are the first steps toward the loss of mental equilibrium.

My opinion is that---sometimes---the insistence on following or jumping into some 'spiritual' (intellectual, religious) trip is a symptom that arises as a reaction to different sorts of social dysfunction, societal dysfunction. What is at issue, it seems to me, is an enduring connection to our basic wholeness, our well-being.

I really think that 'modernity' and we who are moderns, for a host of different reasons, come face to face with madness. Some of the tensions that we face, that we are exposed to, are madness-making. Spirituality, as I see it, a major part of it, is about getting back onto a safe platform, and from that platform dealing with Life, living life. Maybe this is the psychological component of spirituality, and I am certainly speaking with reference to some Jungian ideas.

Also, I think that modern life is about or can/should be about coming up with functional strategies to avoid mental disease, or to hold back mental disease, or to channel out of the head a kind of overheated tension. In some African religions, for example, there are quite sophisticated mystical treatises on what happens to 'the head ('ori') when it gets calamitously overheated, to the degree that it cannot make right choices. There is a whole 'science', as it were, with sophisticated terminology, giving names to the different ways that 'ori' gets afflicted. The object is to 'cool the head' and to restore the head its natural coolness.

When I asked for information about what medications people were taking, it was entirely a joke.
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Myself, I don't use any medications, nor drugs or even alcohol. I never liked the effects of alcohol so drinking was never interesting to me. (I grew up though smoking pot). A few times a year, still, I do employ the assistance of some of the so-called 'plant teachers'. (And I work, but only for part of the year).

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Ni ange, ni bête

Functional strategies to avoid hospitalization due to mental illness: don't use drugs (including alcohol and marijuana) and avoid stressful situations.

I suffer from a sometimes-crippling mental disorder, and that's the most relevant advice there is.

Oh, and I take 300 mg of quetiapine fumerate extended-release after dinner, and 750 mg of divalproex sodium b.i.d..

If you want, you can now play "guess the illness".

This is yet another failure of intellectual honesty. Just as Quinn couldn't honestly relate the story of Hui-neng, so here he cannot honestly relate why Laird is being shown the door. Is it more likely true that Laird cannot write a post without it being tainted by obsession with women, or that Laird is just too damned insightful?

Kevin and I have been on this path for well over twenty years and have never experienced any debilitating loss of mental equilibrium, and never had any need for stabilizing medications.

Dan does have a penchant for alcohol, but he was already like that before he became a philosopher. Make of that what you will.

And again, I dispute your terminology and labeling. I could just as easily say that you have a puritanical anti-truth attitude, place excessive emphasis on poetic sentiments as a means to navigate life, and sacrifice having a conscious relationship with Reality. From my perspective, your outlook is every bit as extreme as how mine seems to you.



I'd say it was either an attempt at a slur, or else a mundane way to try and explain a form of behaviour that you find troubling.

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Genius Realms

I'd like to retract what I wrote above. It was meant to be a "drop the bullshit" virtual slap, or something like that. Reading your recent posts I thought you were hiding behind poetic language, claiming sincerity but writing contrived and pretentious bullshit, and just being an annoying whimsical aesthete, and maybe you were, but in hindsight it seems my response was poorly chosen.