Roosh V vs Paul Elam = r vs K ?

My 2 cents on the recent discussion between Roosh V and Paul Elam.

My take-away from the first part was:

Roosh’s clientele wants an answer to the question: I want to get girls, but I don’t get them (or not enough of them), so what can I do to get girls? Teach me how, show me the magic tricks.

Paul’s clientele wants an answer to the question: I get girls, but they seem to be the wrong girls, because I sometimes get in trouble (or already got in serious trouble), so what can I do to avoid/mitigate those risks? Teach me how to sort out the bad apples and get/stay out of trouble.

It reminds be somewhat of the r/K selection theory. Roosh’s guys are biological r-strategists, when their dick rules and it says „spread your semen“ and don’t think about the consequences. Although the r/K theory says that humans are mainly K-strategists, I believe young men unconsciously are r-strategists until the culture forces them into being K-strategists. In my opinion, biological K-strategy reinforces itself through culture and has enabled culture. The theory allows for a continuous spectrum, i.e. a species may evince both strategies to a certain degree. According to the wikipedia article, the r/K theory is widely applied and useful at the level of species, but it’s clean applicability has been challenged.

Prof. Agner Fog has put forward a theory of cultural r/K selection (which is disputed and still lacks evidence), he calls “r” regal and “K” Kalyptic. Regal culture exhibits stereotypical “traditional” sex roles, sexual morals, a focus on procreation and high population growth. It’s society is ethnocentric, religious, centralized, organized and war prone. Kalyptic culture has liberal sexual morals, tends to focus more on pleasure and education and shows little to no population growth. This culture is individualistic, allows various religious cults and atheism, is democratic, tolerant and somewhat chaotic but peaceful.

From Prof. Agner’s book:

“Sexual morals as controlling means

 

Since many moral taboos are seemingly aimless and irrational, these morals provide a very suitable example for the study of how social norms can develop through cultural selection almost independently of rational planning.

 

If sexual morals had their purported purpose, namely to reduce the number of births, then any kind of sexual activity which does not lead to pregnancy would be a welcome alternative which could provide an outlet for the importunate sexual drives. But since the moral restrictions are most frequently directed against exactly these forms of sexuality, then it is evident that the function of these sexual morals is to compel the population to produce more children, not fewer. The prohibition against unproductive or premarital sex forces people to marry early and raise many children in order to get satisfaction for their sexual drives.”

I postulate (in support of Roosh’s ‘men go through stages’ theory) that young men are natural, biological r-strategists from their wild teenage years, until they get educated into a cultural r-strategy (marry, have kids, be responsible) or what he calls a Victorian family model. This was probably true until the 1960’s and is still seen as favorable by the majority of the western population today. But the promotion of sexual freedoms, a long period of relative peace and in part feminism has lead to a cultural pseudo-K-strategy in our current western societies. A dichotomy in the feminist paradigm is that they promote a cultural Kalyptic strategy (probably one reason why many men welcomed it), but actually allow only women to use it. For today’s feminists, men are always cultural ‘regal’ strategists, which is expressed in their claim of patriarchy and their paradigm of ‘men have always oppressed women’.

Sticking to Fog’s cultural r/K model, the cultural r-strategy strengthens the biological K-selection strategy (take care of kids, high survival rate, longevity). IMO biological K-selection enables a culture to develop. K-selection leads to stable populations which are well adapted to their environment, but limited by scarcity. Biological r-selection supports rapid population growth and expansion until either ecological limits are reached or the environment changes (boom and crash). For them a high level of culture would be difficult to achieve, since their ‘prime directive’ is reproduction. One could implicate (without racial discrimination) that the still rapid population growth in many African, Arabic and some Asian countries puts them more to the r-side of the biological r/K-spectrum than the western countries and that this is reinforced by their cultural, conflict prone r-strategy.

In conclusion, it seems to me Roosh has (finally 😉 ) grown out of his wild teenage phase, being in his mid 30’s now, and is looking forward to being in a ‘stereotypical’ traditional (Victorian) family environment. As he realizes that the current culture in the west has more or less abolished the traditional family model and this way is a minefield, he came to appreciate the ‘fatherly’ approach of Paul, who points out the clear and present danger, which Roosh has largely ignored until recently (or at least has not focused on it). A cultural K-strategy that manifests itself in family law is imo incompatible with traditional family values. What the discussion lacked (maybe because of time restraints) was Paul fully laying out his approach as an alternative to Roosh’s PUA ‘get pussy’ strategy. I hope their next discussion will lead them further down this path, and maybe some of Prof. Fog’s ideas could provide additional stimulation.

After all, two smart adult men had a civilized and informative dispute, without insulting or shouting down each other. That leaves me in high expectations for their next talk. As your stereotypical MGTOW, I will keep sitting on the fences and throw some feces here and there 🙂