The Disadvantages of Long Term Thinking

The ability to think long term is generally considered an advantage with no downside.  It is very useful in that it enables one to delay gratification.  Rather than focussing on immediate rewards, one can devise strategies that will bring greater rewards in the future.  Coupled with a very realistic worldview, it makes one, inasmuch as their situation can be controlled, the master of their own destiny.  The only limits in achieving what they will are externally imposed.

It is however, a severe problem when one’s worldview is unrealistic or they are overly dogmatic and cannot tell whether the immediate or delayed gratification is the better choice.

In my exploration of the manosphere and the topic of game, it seems to me that those who’ve taken on the role and responsibilities of teaching, have taken on the mammoth task of curing men of anti realism and dogmatic long term thinking.  To be very frank, dogmatic long term thinking is on the same level as magical thinking.  It is the magical thinking of median to high intelligence.

The burn, for many men caught in the current “matrix” of the pseudo progressive flavor of “hereafter” is that this is even less realistic than the dogmatic short term thinking of the less intelligent, and therefore produces fewer rewards in the short and the long term.

Heterosexual people are bound by the female “biological clock”, and everybody in the spectrum of male involved sex is bound by male erectile ability.  Consequently, with the exception of the sexually exceptional, our mating strategies must remain relatively short term.  For very practical, biological reasons, we must be opportunists who can read mating signals well, display mating and societally important mating and child rearing ability, and act within a reasonable time frame to increase our chance of success.

Another important thing to consider is that even though long term thinking is associated with intelligence, they’re not the same thing.  Where having a culture that fosters long term thinking, along with supportive genes, will lead to higher average intelligence in a wide population, this does not make all individuals or even the majority of them intelligent enough to control situations (such as successful consensual mating and reproduction) that require external cooperation.  More compelling is that though intelligence and long term thinking are helpful in achieving actual social dominance, neither assures it.

In short, in order to not get tilled under in the salted earth that is today’s dating market, people must force themselves to apply shorter term strategies despite their cultural programming and intellectual tendencies towards long term thinking.

If you are a man, then even if you are healthy and slim, there is a 2:3 chance that by the time you are in your mid 50’s you will have erectile dysfunction, and certainly less testosterone coursing through your veins than you did at 20.

If you are a woman, you have a limited time during which you can safely have children, even with modern technological advances.  If you do not have your first child between 25-30, then you are looking at a much harder time than those who did.  You will lose the ability to have children at all between the ages of 40 and 50.  In addition to this, your looks will fade and your sex drive will likely fade with them.

Enough people are sexually functioning beyond their 40’s that it can be said that there is a “good” chance, and that “quite a few” older people are “doing just fine”, but there is a recently more silent majority whose time has passed by the time they reach 50-55.

“Gather ye rosebuds…”

While it is good for men who hope or expect to live past 50 to think long term with regard to choosing a lifetime companion, if he is limited by an unrealistic worldview, he could miss opportunities that could bring him a good time today, and possibly a companion for the future.  It is a first come, first serve situation, and men cannot afford to miss their chance just because women are being silly thinking they have all the time in the world.

A masterful use of negs can, to some degree, remind a woman that her time is short, but men should get into their heads too, that the woman’s time is short.  It is difficult for a man who isn’t a natural and isn’t currently getting laid regularly to suddenly become good at negging, but this may help.  Today in the here and now, the woman is hot or attractive.  This is a good enough reason to try to hit that without delay.  There should be no worry of rejection for a few reasons, and among them is that it is as much her responsibility to herself not to waste her own limited time as it is yours not to waste your less limited but still limited time.

Rejecting a man who has the potential to bond with her in a way that may be sparked by her looks and her youth, but isn’t solely dependent on it, is wasting her time.  View rejections thusly: her loss.  It truly is.

Though statistics are not individuals, it is not a good idea for anyone to bank on being the exception.  Human eyes are drawn to more physically beautiful people, and the only reason we tolerate imperfections is because of compensating features (like accessibility for instance).  A man can love a woman he married in his youth through her aging, illness, and often even ill temperedness to a point because time has shown that she is going to be there for him and love him regardless of her physical changes and his, and often despite her hormonally or socially imposed mood issues.

Some men fall in love with women who are already past their prime, but almost invariably, it is because this woman has a long history of good behavior.  In fact, in the “over 40 fun club” of folks who mess around because they’re sexually mismatched, although most are divorced or committing technical adultery, there are still lines.  Some of them are even more rigid than they are for single people.

Men are not shallow.  They’re empirical.  They are looking at what a woman has to offer, and in this what she offers in the short term should have a higher priority than the long term.  If she’s a harpy with no care for what she looks like now, and you find yourself unaroused by her now it doesn’t matter what she will look like or behave like in the future.  It also doesn’t matter that society is telling you that you should put up with her crap now for the “greater good” of equality.

If you find a woman attractive, that she might reject you or that she is not everybody else’s cup of tea, or that she is “out of your league” doesn’t matter.  Be in the moment.  This does not mean that you have to behave like a jerk and that the future is totally unimportant.  It’s just that at any particular moment, your next breath is not guaranteed.

Long term thinking is not the same thing as long term existing.  We are all going to die eventually, but right now you’re alive.  Live!

Long term thinkers quite often forget to live in the moment because they forget that stuff happens.  Rather than planning for the future, they bank on it.  Like the less intelligent or culturally guided short term thinker often gets into a rutt of working hard rather than working smart, the more intelligent or culturally guided long term thinker gets into a rutt of overthinking before acting.

You think that if you carefully map things out and make a decision about the future and how it’s going to be, things will be okay.  It doesn’t occur to you to consider that how you feel and who you are now is likely not going to be the same in 5 years and definitely not in 20.  Right now it might be really important to you to get with someone hot and/or socially convenient, or someone who really likes sex often, or whatever.  Cool.  Do what you need to do to get your current needs met.

Bear in mind though, that in 20-30 years, you might just need someone fun to hang out with who’ll kick you down for a b.j. a couple of times a year.  As you get older and your partner or general pool of potentials does too, things like hypergamy can happen, and if you were too dogmatic to be cool with cohabitation and just had to get that paperwork because you were afraid of image issues or hell, you will be screwed.

I don’t think a good God wants your nuts in any woman’s hands.  I don’t think a good God wants you to suffer with lonliness.  I don’t think even a good government wants those either.

So live like someone who understands that nothing lasts forever.  Don’t ignore the red lights, but don’t ignore the green ones either.  Don’t worry about three stages from now.  Think about now.  What do you want right now?

Address that reality first.  After that, you can make decisions about what it might cost you later.  At the moment though, ignoring who you are and what you want is costing your manhood or womanhood, and let’s be frank, your integrity.  Denying your will makes you a liar.  Every time you do it, you become better at telling yourself and the world around you lies.

Stop lying.  Start living.  Now.