Why there are so many incels and red pillers on a spirituality forum

[soos_mite_ah]

I wrote this in my journal a week ago or so and I thought it would be important to have it has its own topic of discussion. I also recommend checking out the video about Envy by Contrapoints because it's a really good break down of that emotion and how it operates. 

On 8/30/2021 at 3:22 PM, soos_mite_ah said:

Envy and Why There Are So Many Incels in a Spirituality Forum

Another thing that Natalie mentions that set off the light bulb moment in my head is how “looking envious up at the rich is painful. It makes you feel inferior. And a way to alleviate that pain is to sublimate envy, and pretend that you’re and aristocratic aesthete scoffing at the vulgar taste of the arriviste.” I think you could replace rich with people who have social/sexual abundance, pretending to be aristocratic with pretending to be an enlightened sage, and scoffing at vulgar taste with scoffing at the unconsciousness of society. And when you make those replacements, then it makes sense why there are so many incels on this forum. There are people over here who have a lot of misanthropic tendencies and instead of admitting that they are jealous of the normies, they try to paint themselves as a bunch of sages who are dedicated to contemplation and solitude when really, some of them are antisocial hermits. I’m not saying everyone is like that. I think there are people who authentically feel that they need to go into hermit mode and figure their lives out and it’s a whole soul searching moment. I’ve been there. But I can’t help but feel that for some people on this forum, their spirituality is a massive cope because how tf are you spiritual and you don’t experience basic empathy towards women!?!?!? There are times where I genuinely feel that my TikTok feed and the people I talk to on a semi regular basis are much more conscious than some of the people I encounter here.

Another example Natalie explains is shit talking plastic surgery (around 54:30). Some transwomen talk about how “at least they don’t look like a botched sex doll” and it’s a form of envy because to achieve this doll like aesthetic, you need to have a lot of money and that’s out of reach for a lot of people. As a result, those people resort of claiming that the thing that is out of reach is not worth having anyway as a way to cope with frustrated desire. This whole thing sounds like the whole envying social and sexual abundance thing where there are people on this forum who claim that they are some how above the social game and that it’s all unconsciousness anyway.

It also mirror a lot of NLOG attitudes that Natalie goes into around 55:30 where some women start being envious and contemptuous of other women they deem to be more socially acceptable and they try to puff themselves up by throwing femininity under the bus and deeming it as stupid to hide their feelings of anxiety and inferiority. And a lot of times, the other girls don’t even exist and they are just an idealized construction of womanhood from the media. You’re basically comparing yourself to a very one-dimensional caricature of womanhood. And then at some point you realize that other women are still multifaceted people with a variety of interests, personalities, and values.  

I guess you can apply the same logic to the “unconscious” people who don’t spend all that amount of time sitting alone working on themselves. There isn’t any one way to perform self awareness and self reflection. You don’t have to go down the spirituality route, the academic route, the psychedelic route, the self help route, etc. if it doesn’t resonate with you. You can still build a sense of self awareness and find yourself through different life experiences.

And there is no right way to experience life. That’s something that I’ve been contemplating lately especially when the topic of priorities come up.  Sometimes we judge one another on the priorities we have and when they don’t align with our own, we judge them as “wasting their life away.” I feel like people who were considered more nerdy growing up is more prone to this type of thinking that the media perpetuates. There is this trope of peaking in high school or college where during those years in your life, you were really social, really talented, really hot, etc, and you focused more on those efforts than you did to your work and then you end up basically failing at life. Peaking in high school or college is often characterized as a popular kid thing but honestly, I don’t think the dorks are immune to this phenomenon. I have met some people who have this whole complex about being a nerd growing up where they’re like “when I was in high school, I paid attention in school and didn’t party and stayed away from drugs and now look at me killing it in life.” And to the people with that complex, all I have to say is “how is your social and emotional health going? Do you have a good way to balance your work and your life or is the success you got from work pretty much ruling your life and you cling onto it because it justifies your pain and trauma you got from lack of social connection growing up and now your career makes it seem like that suffering was ‘worth it’” (listen, I know this sounds really bitchy but like mood). I guess what I’m trying to say is that don’t get a superiority complex around your life decisions because you can still learn from the experiences of others. If they have different experiences, odds are that they probably have something to teach you as well.

And I feel like a lot of the stereotypical smart/good kids sometimes get shades of this because growing up they are told that they are prioritizing the right things and that life is going to fall into their lap if they continue like this and that you will grow up to be better than those other kids in the long run. It’s just a breeding ground for contempt. It’s ok to be envious about someone else’s lifestyles and priorities but I think it’s important to recognize that and see yourself in a different lane doing your own thing that is right for you. Your lane isn’t better or worse nor is your destination going to be better or worse. And you’re probably going to go through different phases of your life where your priorities shift around anyways. We’re all in a different season in our lives and while Chad over there is prioritizing his social life and is developing his social skills and figuring out dating at 16 and then goes into contemplative hermit mode 10 years later, that doesn’t make his path better or worse if compare it to how you went into contemplative hermit mode at 16 and then decided to focus on your social skills more later in life.

For the people who decided to take the self help route later in life, that’s ok. You didn’t waste your life. Sure there are pros and cons of doing this work earlier or later but one of the big pros is having a lot of life experience and being able to draw on those past experiences instead of theorizing a bunch of what ifs. And as a result, you may have more concrete examples of lessons in life as opposed to abstractions of what you should and shouldn’t do.   

And for the people who took this route earlier, there is no need to get a moral superiority complex around all of this. You aren’t ahead of anyone in life. You just decided to prioritize different things and that’s ok. I also feel like some young people who get super into self-development early and go hermit mode does feel envy towards normies because of the shit they've gone through on this journey but because that’s painful to admit, they transform it in moral superiority.

I think it’s also really important to look at the part around 1:19:00 where Natalie talks about this moralism turns inward and attacks the individual conscious which then produces asceticism, self-denial, and guilt. Because slave morality not only calls out the external factors oppressing a person but also the internal factors with in, or our animal instincts. And this results in hating our nature, hating ourselves, and just hating life itself. The only thing I thought of in this section is the spiritual ego and how it can cause you to hate yourself and others causing you to want to meditate in a cave somewhere for the rest of your days instead of saying yes to life.

[Leo Gura]

Because many young men these days struggle with attracting women.

A big part of it is simply lack of socialization. People on the internet are overwhelmingly introverted and socially dysfunctional. And the majority of the YT audience is young males.

[soos_mite_ah]

3 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Because many young men these days struggle with attracting women.

A big part of it is simply lack of socialization. People on the internet are overwhelmingly introverted and socially dysfunctional.

I agree with this. But I also wanted to focus as to why there is a lot on a spirituality forum specifically. There are a lot of corners of the internet where awkward, extremely introverted people gather but they don't turn into places with a lot of incels and red pillers. 

[Nos7algiK]

I think it's very very simple of an explanation. Spirituality is the big thing right now that many attempt to hook others with it specially on YouTube. A big attraction to spirituality is it's marketed towards holding "truth" or freedom from suffering. I wouldn't say incels or red pillers are specifically attracted to this, but rather because the pool of people being attracted to spirituality in modern day is so large it brings in incels and red pillers as well. People with ideas such as this are so against the grain to most of us they easily stand out causing the numbers to how many their actually are to be inflated.

I believe much of it's wrapped up in spiritual bypassing as well. Spirituality itself is a very good guise to wear in order to mask one's own insecurities or/and hate.

Edited September 9, 2021 by Nos7algiK

[Leo Gura]

Because we do self improvement here, and one of the biggest things guys want to improve is their sex life.

The fastest way to convince a guy to improve himself is to promise him more sex. Because guys think with their dicks.

[Jodistrict]

37 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Because many young men these days struggle with attracting women.

A big part of it is simply lack of socialization. People on the internet are overwhelmingly introverted and socially dysfunctional. And the majority of the YT audience is young males.

 

But then modern society defines the extroverts doing dumb things on tik tok as functional.    Are the introverts dysfunction or is it the society? 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tq0QOEkCHw4

[Leo Gura]

Dysfunction is always a lack of holism and harmony.

Function and health requires exquisite dynamic balance. Which is otherwise known as intelligence.

[diamondpenguin]

14 minutes ago, Jodistrict said:

 

But then modern society defines the extroverts doing dumb things on tik tok as functional.    Are the introverts dysfunction or is it the society? 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tq0QOEkCHw4

@Jodistrict Obviously introverts create the society, but extroverts live in the society.

See?

Edited September 10, 2021 by diamondpenguin

[Karmadhi]

Also people that watch Leo's content tend to be intellectual and logical people due to his teaching style and things that he tends to discuss  It suits such people more and such people tend to struggle more with girls because such people tend to be naturally introverted and intellectual. An introvert is more likely to question reality and care about epistmeic issues due to them being in their heads a lot more. I do not expect your party jock to watch Leo's videos. It will be the intellectual nerd that will.

So his teaching style draws in a certain demographic which tends to be naturally worse with girls. It also explains why most of his followers are male due to his teaching style.

Edited September 10, 2021 by Karmadhi

[Surfingthewave]

@soos_mite_ah

Behind the misogyny and bravado of red pill thinking, is a deep desire to meet The One - to have a relationship, to experience love. Because love is messy often involving heart break and rejection and can be anxiety provoking, instead of realising this is the reality of modern relationships these men often turn to spirituality forums to find the answers. 

Loneliness is an important part also, it's easier to rant to a lot of women/other men about your lack of sex life on a spirituality/self help forum anonymously than go and get the help you need. 

Edited September 10, 2021 by Surfingthewave

[Flowerfaeiry]

Spirituality is not about acting a certain way. 

We often come to spirituality to heal and grow, so it makes sense it would attract people who want to do those things. 

[Gesundheit2]

So, basically there are two types of men who you seem to be concerned with in this thread:

• Pretend sages who are full of envy and low consciousness.
• And others who genuinely use spirituality as a coping mechanism.

Well, since I'm neither of those, I'll just lol and skip.

[zazen]

Its a self development forum, and this section is literally called Dating,relationships,sexuality lol.

Spirituality includes all but is not contained by all. We are spirits incarnated into the physical, from carnal (flesh, we are in flesh), also where carnivore (flesh eating) and carnival (celebration of the flesh) comes from. 

Relationship and sexuality is central to the human experience and a lot of men are struggling with it today. As Leo mentioned one cause is lack of social skills from growing up in front of screens. Pick up and now red pill was a reaction to this difficulty, which has its negative sides also. The red pill concept comes from the Matrix series meaning to see the truth, and thats what it tries to do, see the truth of human behaviour, in particular why we mate the way we do. The way people react to it is the problem, and comes from a defeatist attitude, which then sets into rage and nihilism and in its extreme form the black bill and incels. 

[SamC]

 

I think that these kind of threads in a way is the same on a structure level as the incel threads which creates the dynamic where the war only intensifies even more.

If we want to be a community where we are loving and try to grow together - I belive it is necessary to not only stop promoting how "the evil girls " are the bad ones, but also how the " the evil boys" ( Incels) are the bad ones.

Notice. It's the same dynamic. That's why both sides hate eachoter. It's a projection on both sides. No one can't stand themselves.

Edited September 10, 2021 by SamC

[soos_mite_ah]

I know my post was really long but basically I wanted to explore the role of envy and how it can create a spiritual ego or create a lot of projection because strong emotions like like envy is really difficult for most people to admit much less digest. 

I'm not trying to say that getting into spirituality and also wanting to improve your dating life is wrong or at odds but Ii will admit when I first got to this forum, I came here with the expectation that I wouldn't deal with things like red pill ideology even in a section centered around dating because they are so low in terms of self awareness and awareness regarding empathizing with others. I do think that things are getting better in regards to how much toxic blue and orange is in that section, but I thought it would be beneficial as to why some people with similar mentalities would be attracted to spirituality apart from basic healing purposes. 

I also found some of the misanthropy and restrictions from life to be interesting. Sometimes I get this vibe that some people just stop saying yes to life and start judging people who aren't super into spirituality and self improvement as unconscious which I thought was important to step back and look into. 

I'm not trying to attack people who are having issues socially or people who are into spirituality or anything of that nature but I wanted to talk about some of the emotional self deception that comes with emotions such as envy masquerading as other emotions to protect the ego. I apologize if it came out in an attacking way. 

[soos_mite_ah]

Also @Etherial Cat @Tangerinedream @modmyth @Raphael @RendHeaven @Emerald @flowboy @aurum, I don't mean to put you on the spot but, I would love to hear some of yall's thoughts if yall have any. Specifically on the role of envy. 

Edited September 10, 2021 by soos_mite_ah

[hamedsf]

we can be all spiritual and still have different ideas about different stuff.

it's not important, if you see a few guys who are redpillers or pickup artists here on forum, what is most important is lowering down ur sensitivity towards some type of people with specific mentality.   

[flowboy]

25 minutes ago, soos_mite_ah said:

Also @Etherial Cat @Tangerinedream @modmyth @Raphael @RendHeaven @Emerald @flowboy @aurum, I don't mean to put you on the spot but, I would love to hear some of yall's thoughts if yall have any.

I think they come here thinking they want to share their point of view and get people to confirm it - whilst actually, their higher self is sending them here to be healed. And they know it on some level. Their toxic posts are subconsciously a cry for help and attention. "Look at the terrible world that I live in, it's so painful! Somebody convince me life is better than this please, because I can't convince myself! I've been in too much pain."

And you do see that it works, in the long term. You can't argue someone out of inceldom in a single thread, but I have seen at least one or two incels on here that gradually became more open minded, started taking some action, shifted their mindset and actually got a girlfriends or started dating.

Of course, those two who made it had the proper jaw line.

Edited September 10, 2021 by flowboy

[soos_mite_ah]

@modmyth I do have a morbid curiosity towards this whole phenomenon. There's just so much you can talk about from the envy, the masochistic epistemology (and just natalie's takes in general tbh), the racism, the sexism, people growing more and more isolated, right wing resurgence and more. I do like how you brought up the racial subtext to a lot of this because I do feel like it is something that gets ignored for the blatant misogyny. I think this side of things is especially something that a lot of Asian men do have to deal with because of the way white supremacy demasculinizes them. I feel like when it comes to things like misogyny and internalized incel self hatred, each demographic has their own specific flavor of it depending on a myriad of factors, most of which come from historical context. 

I think the other reason why the racism aspect goes undiscussed about is because on how a lot of the mass shooters are white men, typically white men who have been rejected by a woman or isolated by a lot of people growing up. 

[aurum]

7 hours ago, soos_mite_ah said:

Also @Etherial Cat @Tangerinedream @modmyth @Raphael @RendHeaven @Emerald @flowboy @aurum, I don't mean to put you on the spot but, I would love to hear some of yall's thoughts if yall have any. Specifically on the role of envy. 

My thinking is that everyone usually has a mix of both light and shadow motivations.

For example, let’s say I start reading personal development books because I’m tired of not living up to my potential. I want to be the best version I can be, and from that place, be of service to others. I would consider this a “light” motivation, as it’s usually the motivation we are most conscious of and identified with.

But, let’s say that I also start reading personal development books because deep down I don’t feel I’ll ever be good enough or measure up. And so personal development helps me cope with this pain by allowing me to feel like I’m always “improving”. This I would consider a “shadow” motivation, and it’s usually not in our conscious awareness. Only later may we recognize it.

It’s this psychological fragmentation that can allow us to have these multiple motives all at the same time. Even motives that may seem contradictory. And our actions tend to be the result of this inner conflict.

So in your case, you are speaking about envy in the spiritual community for essentially material success. We all have needs, but if we feel we cannot meet them, we may resort to coping mechanisms (like envy or judgment) to feel better about ourselves. This definitely does happen and is definitely a potential shadow motivation people in the spiritual community should be aware of.

At the same time, does this mean the spiritual community is particularly toxic? I don’t think so. The reality is that the mind can use any teaching to justify anything it feels is in its best interests. This is not a problem unique to spiritual people. I could just as easily take a secular teaching and distort it just the same. 

Perhaps we could say those in the spiritual community should be held to a higher standard since we claim higher levels of awareness. And maybe for a spiritual master, I would agree. But I think this is mostly unfair to ask of your average seeker.

Your average seeker, who hasn’t put in lots of work, is more or less at the same level of awareness as anyone else.

So I think you make good points. There’s more we could go into here but this I feel is the most essential.

Edited September 11, 2021 by aurum