Mark Manson is the author of the well-respected dating book “Models: Attract Women Through Honesty” that espouses honesty, self-discovery, genuine connection with like-minded human beings and… common sense as a way of life and love; we talk about materialism, death, vulnerability, rejection, demographics, self-discovery, writing rituals, etc. Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or RSS, and check … Continue reading 41: Mark Manson on Pick-Up Artists, Monogamy, Materialism, Writing, and Upping the Quality of Your Suffering →
Mark Manson is the author of the well-respected dating book “Models: Attract Women Through Honesty” that espouses honesty, self-discovery, genuine connection with like-minded human beings and… common sense as a way of life and love; we talk about materialism, death, vulnerability, rejection, demographics, self-discovery, writing rituals, etc. Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or RSS, and check … Continue reading 41: Mark Manson on Pick-Up Artists, Monogamy, Materialism, Writing, and Upping the Quality of Your Suffering →
Mark Manson is the author of the well-respected dating book “Models: Attract Women Through Honesty” that espouses honesty, self-discovery, genuine connection with like-minded human beings and… common sense as a way of life and love; we talk about materialism, death, vulnerability, rejection, demographics, self-discovery, writing rituals, etc.
Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or RSS, and check out our facebook page.
On pick-up artist philosophy:
“Women are complex and it’s an adventure getting to know them and understand them. You can never reduce dating to an algorithm: say this, text her this many times, etc.”
On experience:
“The only way more experience with women can be bad is through the ‘paradox of choice’. If you give people two options, and they choose one, generally they will be happy with what they chose. If you give them 100 options and they choose one, then they are more likely to spend a lot of time worrying that maybe the other 99 options were better, that they missed out.”
On monogamy:
“Monogamy works for most people. What doesn’t work for most people is ’till death do us part’. The majority of people prefer to stay with one partner at one time. What doesn’t work for the majority is being sexually monogamous with one person for 60+ years. Once you take into account the divorce rate and the infidelity rate, you end up with a small slice of the pie of people who stay faithful to one another their entire lives. A lot of people get bummed out by that idea, but this is something we have to be realistic and honest about. That said, people vary a lot.”
On demographics:
“If you want a woman with different values then you need to live a life based on different values. You can’t go spend money at a strip club and expect a girl from Sunday school to show up on a date with you.”
On writing:
“The first draft is for me. The revision is for the readers.”
On “suffering better”:
“We spend most of our lives focusing on gaining more and more positive experiences, but the quality of our lives is actually determined by our ability to handle negative experiences.”
The following is an abridged quote from Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace that I read to close the podcast:
“If, by the virtue of charity or the circumstance of desperation, you ever chance to spend a little time around a Substance-recovery halfway facility, you will acquire many exotic new facts…That certain persons simply will not like you no matter what you do. That you do not have to like a person in order to learn from him/her/it. That loneliness is not a function of solitude. That logical validity is not a guarantee of truth. That it takes effort to pay attention to any one stimulus for more than a few seconds. That boring activities become, perversely, much less boring if you concentrate intently on them. That if enough people in a silent room are drinking coffee it is possible to make out the sound of steam coming off the coffee. That sometimes human beings have to just sit in one place and, like, hurt. That you will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do. That there is such a thing as raw, unalloyed, agendaless kindness. That concentrating intently on anything is very hard work. That the people to be the most frightened of are the people who are the most frightened. That it takes great personal courage to let yourself appear weak. That no single, individual moment is in and of itself unendurable. That other people can often see things about you that you yourself cannot see, even if those people are stupid. That having a lot of money does not immunize people from suffering or fear. That trying to dance sober is a whole different kettle of fish. That, perversely, it is often more fun to want something than to have it. That if you do something nice for somebody in secret, anonymously, without letting the person you did it for know it was you or anybody else know what it was you did or in any way or form trying to get credit for it, it’s almost its own form of intoxicating buzz. That it is permissible to want. That everybody is identical in their unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else. That there might not be angels, but there are people who might as well be angels.”
