The Tao Of Jekyll
All of the things that we can see in the world around us as valuable and important in other people, all of them, are red herrings. They are falsehoods, they are shadows. They have to be, because of the very nature of how we perceive them, how we put them together as ideas in our heads, and also, because of what they fundamentally are.

Red herrings? Let me explain. Power is a red herring. Social value is a red herring. Congruence is a red herring. Confidence is a red herring. Status is a red herring. When I say that they are red herrings, I'm not saying they're not real factors in a social interaction. But they are red herrings inasmuch as if you chase them directly, you will never find them. You will fail. You cannot gain power by chasing power alone. You cannot gain social value by seeking it directly. If you strive for status, it will forever elude you. All you can ever achieve by working for such things, through a massive effort of willpower, is to train yourself to project an illusion of these things, all of which are incidental factors of something much deeper and more profound.

But before we examine what that factor is, let's just look for a second at why it is we believe these red herrings are so important, why we seek them and where they come from. To my mind, all these aspects of a social interaction have been elevated in our minds to the highest position of importance because they are the things you see successful people do in social situations.

Take Mystery. As I mentioned elsewhere, the guy has a dizzying intellect. He has mapped human interaction externally, and linked his findings and his model back to evolutionary psychology. Within the context of his method, he emphasises factors like status, value and congruence as pivotal and fundamental facets of a pickup artist's success. Why? Because if you map the behaviour of a successful ladies' man from the outside, they are the factors that appear decisive. This approach predates Mystery. What Mystery has done is taken an external analysis of human interaction to an exhaustive level of detail. Everyone does this at a basic level, myself included. I'll sometimes find myself, even now, looking at a natural player and thinking "Damn, that man is confident. He just doesn't give a shit. Wow."

But the problem with an external analysis of human behaviour, whether it is Mystery's model or a statistical analysis of psychological data, is that by it's very nature the human animal is infinite in it's external expressions of its internal state. You cannot even list all the different things that make a man attractive, because such a list would be infinite and infinitely varied from man to man, and dependent upon the unique tastes and perspectives of the women who interact with him.

All of these red herrings are externally visible. This is because they are symptomatic of attraction, and not causal. When we look at someone's behaviour, we are analysing what we can see of them to give us clues to who they really are inside. This is an automatic response, it is how we monkeys size each other up. We are all so adept at creating a facade around us that if we all took each other at face value, evolution would favour only the greatest manipulators. This would mean that evolutionarily, we all would be card carrying psychopaths. We would be genetically hardwired so to be, and there would be no such thing as kindness or compassion, because to display such behaviour would be suicidal in a world peopled only by the profoundly selfish. But this isn't the world in which we live. Compassion is not necessarily dangerous. People are not necessarily selfish. Kindness can be a strength. Sometimes people are selfish. Sometimes they are not.

Something else, something more sophisticated, is going on under the surface. A huge factor in human social interaction is the search to find out what that deeper level is in the people we meet. This is obviously a massive factor in seduction, but only because it is a critically important factor in human interactions in general.

So we look to things like confidence, congruence, status and social value as clues to tell us something of the inner heart of a person. All of these things can, indeed, be massively unattractive. Confidence is unattractive if it is based upon an overweening ego. Congruence is unattractive if you are congruent with your cruelty. Status is unattractive if you hate the people who make up the social hierarchy underneath a person of status. Social value is unattractive if you are valuable to a detestable society.

But why do these things elude you when you seek them directly? It's very simple. They have no reality. They are concepts which we ascribe to external aspects of a person's behaviour. They are, quite simply, thoughts that you have about a person. Moreover, striving for power, status and value is a pastime as old as the human race, and perhaps older still. Everyone who believes they are not good enough does this. They always have, and they always will. So essentially, if you see someone directly seeking power or status, all that tells you about the person at a fundamental level is that they do not believe that they are good enough on their own.

That is the message that you send out, and we are all, men and women, genetically hardwired to be extremely sensitive to this message. It tells us more about the person in an instant than all the social value in the world can ever do. It tells us that they do not believe themselves worthy. They do not believe themselves complete. It tells us that there is a gaping hole inside them where their self-esteem should be. And that tells us that if we ally ourselves with that person, whether as a friend or as a lover, we are lashing ourselves to the mast of a sinking ship. Instantly, emotional alarm bells ring inside us, blaring out the message that we should get away, that we should disassociate ourselves from that person.

We experience these warning bells as revulsion. They repel us from someone. That is what it feels like to be unattracted to someone. That is where it comes from. That is why it exists as an evolutionary response.

So these things are red herrings. If you chase them, they will elude you, your friends and lovers will leave you and you will shatter yourself with loneliness and desperation. This sounds harsh, and most people do not sink to these extremes forever. But I do believe that the vast majority of people reading this will know exactly what I'm talking about from first hand experience. This is a trap that people have been falling into since the birth of humanity – people have chased the things that they feel they lack only to find those things become an ever retreating horizon.

But then – and you may all have experienced what I am about to describe – every now and then you become more. Every now and then, when you're not noticing, perhaps when you are drunk, perhaps when you are among your very good friends or perhaps when you meet someone who just puts you completely at your ease, something happens inside you. You shift, in some unknown sense, into a different mode, a mode in which people look up to you. They actually really admire you. They aren't sucking up or begging for your approval, but they rate you. They respect you. You are valuable to them. They would help you out if they could, and they would consider it an honour so to do. You get attention from the opposite sex, and you just seem to know what to do with it. Nothing is awkward, and nothing is forced. You just feel chilled, and easy, and powerful. Your jokes are funny, and you're not feeling conscious of anyone else looking at you – although you notice that you do get more attention. You just love it. You love that moment, the moment of existence. You exist in it, you live in it, and somehow it completes you.

I got this every now and then, back in the day before I knew anything of women or myself. Once in a while I'd just be 'on form'. Everything I said would work. It was so effortless, and so much fun. But I could never manufacture it. I could never reproduce it. And when I saw a woman who was, to my mind, out of my league, it would shake me. I'd become someone else. Someone worse. Someone less than I was. It happened all the time, and it happened always and only when I really, really wanted someone.

You know what I mean. Have you ever felt that the only women who want you are the ones you don't want? I got that all the time. It was relentless. It cut me up. But I could see that no matter how complex it all seemed, there was some kind of pattern to it. Something that was, at heart, really very simple. It played itself out in infinite ways, but it was always that exact pattern – if I wanted someone I'd become a bag of nervous energy and fuck it all up. Something was going on that made all of my best traits into negative things that worked against me. My eloquence became pretentiousness. My confidence became arrogance. My shyness became insecurity. And always it was with the people I wanted the most to connect with.

Honesty. Openness. Being genuine. Self-expression. I talk about these things a lot. But how do you get there? How do you get to a place where all the trappings of the alpha male just fall into place around you?

I think, to be straight with you, that a lot of this comes down to courage. Courage is one of the most attractive qualities that a person can show. Courage is all a person needs to face any situation and bring all the limitless resources of their evolutionary heritage, the limitless resources of their humanity, to bear upon it. But you can't just tell someone that you're brave. You need to be able to demonstrate it. And I guess that's what being genuine is. It's a DHV, a demonstration of higher value. Or perhaps a DHC. A demonstration of higher courage.

I can put on a facade. I can pretend to be someone I'm not – we all can. Everyone has that faculty. And if someone rejects us when we are being fake, they reject the mask we wear. It doesn't really hurt. It doesn't hurt because the rejection isn't a comment on us. It's a comment on the person we're pretending to be. I mean, shit - it still leaves you lonely and alone. But it doesn't cut you, because whatever it is that that person is cutting, it has nothing to do with you.

If you put yourself out there – if you put your SELF out there – you throw it to the lions. People will try to bite chunks out of you, for reasons of their own. People will test you, people will attack you. And they're not attacking a mask you've built, they're attacking your personality itself. If you're prepared to do put yourself out there in the first place, you can show that you have the courage to do that. You demonstrate it. It is undeniable. You are not telling people you are brave. You are showing that you have valour.

But it's not enough just to put yourself out there. If you allow your personality to be chewed up, if you take the shit that is thrown at you to heart, then you are showing that your courage is not backed up by strength. It's a bit like charging a machinegun nest armed with a rusty spoon and a jar of jam. That's not brave. That's reckless. Reckless and stupid. I mean, sure, you might fluke a one-in-a-million chance and disembowel the Nazis who've been distracted by a consignment of sauerkraut and some Scheize porn. Odds are you'll get cut down like wheat.

Arm yourself, and armour yourself.

Arm yourself with skills of expression. Develop them through daring and experimentation. Learn to use your language and your body to express the shit you have inside yourself like you'd learn to play a musical instrument. Push yourself as hard as you want to. It's not a race. Arm yourself with skill.

Armour yourself with internal strength. The first thing you need to cultivate is an attitude of not giving a fuck. Not giving a fuck about the opinions that others hold about your personality. This is simple. It's not easy, but it is simple. All you really need to do is recognise the essential and fallible humanity of the people you want to connect with. This is pivotal. It's so important that I'm going to write it again, and in capitals.

RECOGNISE THE ESSENTIAL AND FALLIBLE HUMANITY OF THE PEOPLE YOU WANT TO CONNECT WITH.

This doesn't just go for women you want. It goes for your heroes, for the men you look up to. For the people you want with all your heart to link up with and learn from. For your boss at work. For the guy across the desk from you in the interview. The DJ at the club. Your best friend, the one who betrayed you. Your parents. Your enemies. Everyone.

And why should you recognise this? It's very simple. Sure, you should do it because you'll be able to connect with them. Sure, you should give it a go because you'll be able to forgive the people who've hurt you. Sure, you'll be able to heal yourself and become stronger. Sure, you'll have status. Sure, you'll have value. Sure, you'll have power. Sure, the women in your life will connect with you to a depth that you've never experienced before, sure they'll want you, and their attraction for you will arise and accelerate at a rate you've never seen before.

But that's not why you should recognise it. All these things are red herrings. If you chase any of them, you'll never find them. You'll just fuck yourself up and never get there. You should recognise it for the simple and awesome reason that it is, quite simply, true.

The people you want to connect with are essentially and fallibly human. They have to be. It is in their nature so to be. It is the way of things. They are essentially and fallibly human.

Just like you. Just like me.

And once you see that, once you understand that it just is the truth about the world in which we live, you can throw your personality into the lions den knowing that the lions which will ravage it have no deeper or more perfect understanding of the world than anyone else. They are all just people. No matter what they look like. No matter their beauty, or confidence, or the brilliance of their achievements.

Oh, and the flip side of the coin is even better. It's this. They are not worth less because they are essentially and fallibly human. They're worth more. Much more. Because what is beautiful about a person is their personality. And it is beautiful. More beautiful, more inspiring and more wonderful than anything else I can imagine existing.

It is a wonderful thing that the truth about who we are is so amazing, and so beautiful.

It is the most amazing thing about the world, I think, that we humans actually are, despite all the horror and all the shit we create and wallow in, creatures of limitless complexity and wonder. It makes me smile. It makes me impatient to wake and face another day. It sounds intense, I know. And it can be. It can blow you away. But it's not too much to handle. We're programmed by evolution to be able to take this all in stride.

But it makes the striding worthwhile. And for that, I am, and will always remain, thankful.

Thankful and glad.