There are two significant differences to my mind.
The first is that the PUA seeks to copulate with women, NOT by being feminine, like a cuttlefish, but by imitating competitive males. The second is that these men are interested neither children, nor in long-term monogamous relationships; the first of these makes PUA useless as a reproductive strategy, for there is no reproduction -- and the other appears to leave the alpha males the field open a bit later in life: except that the women so used are "older and wiser more bitter, hence less appealing to the competitive male, you go for younger women: these older women either hide in apartments and get 27 cats, or turn into Maureen Dowd and drop out of the mating race altogether.
Another issue is "hookups" involving oral sex, masturbation, contraception, and abortion: many of the screw-like-bunnies-instead-of-families crowd engage in this, so their birth rate is not what it would have been.
The other missing element is divorce and the marginalization of all the males who are not top of the heap, but who do most of the useful work in a society to provide for their (not-hottie, but still serviceable) "5"-to-"7" wives.
Will discuss other points in a day or two as I have time.
Cheers!
g_w
Yes, but imitating is the key word. The r-selected organism's goal is promiscuity through deception. The cuttlefish pretends to be female, to avoid having to compete, and this works as females apparently have evolved to accept transvestite males for some reason. In our more K-selected species females won't accept Transvestite males (I say this is due to K-selection because the aggressive r-selection applied when our Warriors left for WWII did result in a generation concieved in the forties that matured into the Hippies, in which females did accept androgynous and feminine Hippie males).
Anyway, imitation designed to allow males to avoid actual fitness based competition is the strategy in both cases. One of your PUA guys says on his site, “The investment required to be dominant over men is significantly more costly than the investment required to display attraction-inducing dominance,” implying that competing for resources is a waste of time, when you can just fool women with an illusion of success. These are guys who instinctively would be r-selected betas, but one discovered that circumstance will allow him to fake K-selected Alpha, and as word leaked out, they all adopted the technique to satiate their r-selected promiscuity drive.
Finally, notice that under extreme r-selection, as when we shipped all service age males overseas in WWII, the formula changed. Hippies followed the cuttlefish model exactly, even down to the feminine, non-threateneing, pacifistic male facade. Even today, as K-selection has overtaken our species again, we still see the effete Liberal, adhere exactly to the Anticompetitive model. War is bad, Capitalism is bad, macho is bad, manly is bad - the classic conflict avoidance through effete facade.
That all said, we are a smart species. PUAs are adapting techniques to satiate an underlying drive. Avoid competition, copulate, forget about raising any children, move on. That is r-selection. It not surprising, that in a highly intelligent species, out of 350 million people, a small contingent of r-selected individuals would imitate K-selected males to gain access to highly fit females who would otherwise be out of their league.
The second is that these men are interested neither children, nor in long-term monogamous relationships; the first of these makes PUA useless as a reproductive strategy, for there is no reproduction
Yes but we didn't evolve yesterday, with birth control and abortions. We evolved these r/K selection urges back before we were even human. Go back to just before birth control and abortion. The PUA psychology would impregnate women, and move on, leaving the female to raise the children.
r-selection is defined as promiscuity, not investing in child rearing, and lack of desire to compete with others. As in males mate with as many women as possible, and leave before the offspring are born, like a rabbit or mouse. In a state of nature, that is exactly what the PUA would be driven to do. And I will bet most would vote Dem, and test out as a Lib on Jost's various personality assays. Low conscientiousness, diminished loyalty, less rule adherence, more tolerance for out-group interests etc.
-- and the other appears to leave the alpha males the field open a bit later in life: except that the women so used are "older and wiser more bitter, hence less appealing to the competitive male, you go for younger women: these older women either hide in apartments and get 27 cats, or turn into Maureen Dowd and drop out of the mating race altogether.
That was funny. But I don't think you can mention Maureen Dowd without posting a Catherine Zeta Jones picture. I hear JimRob is real strict on that one.
Another issue is "hookups" involving oral sex, masturbation, contraception, and abortion: many of the screw-like-bunnies-instead-of-families crowd engage in this, so their birth rate is not what it would have been.
Again, these are all recent additions to an intellectual animal which was already behaviorally evolved, with these urges in place. Look at the urges, and visualize the result they would have produced in more primitive times, prior to birth control, prior to abortion, prior to an ability to predict outcomes and use technology to alter them.
Promiscuity and short term relationships will produce lots of children by lots of women, that the male will not be involved in rearing. The urge is the r-selected strategy, it produces a different result because our intellect and ability to mold future circumstances to our benefit has combined with technological advancement to alter how it will play out. Evolution hasn't caught up yet, so we are seeing old urges combined with new circumstances.
The other missing element is divorce and the marginalization of all the males who are not top of the heap, but who do most of the useful work in a society to provide for their (not-hottie, but still serviceable) "5"-to-"7" wives.
I think I see where the confusion is. You are equating successful (Alpha in PUA lingo) with K-selected, and unsuccessful (Beta in PUA lingo) with r-selected. These are psychologies, not measures of success, and they are likely present by age 7 or 8, long before any competition even begins. In fact, success is wholly unrelated to them. Plenty of K-selected cuttlefish fail, but they are still K-selected.
Thus, a man can work cleaning up horse manure at the racetrack, and yet be K-selected in his psychology. Such a guy will view life as a competition, and take his chances in the game where he can. But he will abide by rules, as in hi ethic of working for his income, and accepting the outocmes of competition. He will be monogamous, carefully raise his children as best he can in a two parent household consisting of a Mom and Dad, and he will probably vote Conservative, even if the Libs would raid government coffers to buy his vote.
Conversely, you can have a rich person, who owns a very successful company, but who is r-selected in his psychology. He will be averse to open, rule governed competitions which offer the possibility of loss, and he will be prone to opportunistic advantage taking. He will have short term promiscuous relationships with women, and not invest as heavily in child rearing as he invests in his own pleasure. He will tend to be selfish, disloyal to in-group, and Liberal.
I think it is the PUA stuff which is confusing you, and me too, as I am not all that familiar with it. Alphas are similar to K-selected, in that they are brash and confrontational, and claim success in Competition. But success is not K-selected, and failure is not r-selected. The most K-selected individual is the one who abides by honor in rules of competition, to the point he will accept a defeat honestly, when he has been beaten fairly in free competition. The business owner who accepts failure rather than pay off a politician to raid government coffers on his behalf comes to mind.
Conversely, the most r-selected individual is the one who shamelessly lies, cheats, and steals his way to blinding success by rigging the Competition to be unfair. Think Nazis locking up and then killing Jews, because the Nazis couldn't compete economically in fair competition. Think of a business man who pays off politicians to regulate his competition into failure, and who maintains it was all wholly ethical.
There is no doubt that there is complexity in our species. You take an individual and it is nearly impossible to categorize them easily. But zoom out, to ideologies. On one side you've got Republicans and Conservatives, and on the other you've got Democrats and Liberals.
One ideology embraces peer on peer competitions from capitalism to war. They advocate for abstinence until monogamy, and they coined the phrase “family values.”
The other ideology, in it's purest form, seeks to suppress Competitions and/or redistribute the disparate outcomes they produce, from Communism/Socialism/ (the purest forms of Leftism), to pacifism and disparagement of confrontation (Political Correctness). They support a more promiscuous culture (check Hollywood, for Lib positions on that), and they view concern over family values and indecency in culture as a waste of time, while they support all manner of bizarre child rearing. They give fisting kits to 14 year olds, and teach toddlers about how being a transvestite single dad is a great way to parent a child.
I think if you see r/K selection theory, and how it revolves around issues of promiscuity, child rearing, and competitions between men, and you look at political ideology, you will see they are one and the same animal. Every issue of each ideology is wholly predictable and explainable through that prism.
Freegards,