***
Transcript of the key pieces:
“Say there is a woman in a room with 10 men, and all 10 men are telling her how beautiful she is, and how amazing she is and they are lighting her cigarettes and buying her drinks and just treating her like gold.Let me add something:
Then, all of a sudden, in walks the 11th man, he takes one look at her and says "hey how ya doin'", turns his back on her and starts talking to his boys. THAT'S the guy she wants to be with, the 11th man. Not any of the 10 men who were treating her well all night, but the one guy that couldn't care less. Why?
Because, for some reason, women don't want nice, they don't want real, they don't want to be treated well. I mean, not at first, and sometimes not ever—and I think that's crazy. And I refuse to play that game ....
I don’t want to have to play that game, get a girl by pretending that I don’t like her. I want to be with a woman who is real. Who digs it when I’m nice to her. Who doesn’t see that as weakness or take me for granted when I tell her that I think she is more amazing than anything else in the entire world, but unfortunately most women aren't like that, they say they are, deep down inside they want to be, but ... they're not."
Then, all of a sudden, in walks the 12th man. He has a nice suit, impeccably worn. He stands straight, stops at the entrance of the bar and looks around with a smile. His friends pour in on both sides, merrily bantering. A couple of them stop and ask him: “What do you think about this place, should we stay and get a drink?”
But he doesn’t respond. His eyes laid on the woman. He is now looking at her, and starts walking towards her. “Sorry I’m late, I hope you didn’t get tired from waiting for me all your life. I like your earrings. They’re daring, but also feminine. They made me curious and I wanted to know you better. Hi, I’m Sam.”
Is she going to choose the 11th man or the 12th?
Why?
[ed. From: Charisma = Sex = Humor = Leadership (Tomas Pueyo: Uncharted Territories).]
***
Sotonye: On why men don’t need or want talk therapyOn a recent re-watch of the Sopranos I couldn’t help but think about how the show is partly anchored around the tension between typical gendered-behaviors around mental health, which see women seek out care on average more often than men and with more treatment period retention, and Tony’s break from these expectations as a mob boss who goes to talk therapy. It’s striking and unusual for a man to put his mental world on a clinical platter, but I wondered—why? You have the best series on sex differences online so when I had this thought I immediately wanted to ask you: what are the evolutionary explanations for sex-based differences in internal problem resolution? What do men need if it isn’t talking?
Tomas: (...)
A dominant man can't be weak.
This is why men don't default to seeking help for mental health—I need help, therefore I am weak, and hence not dominant.
It's why Tony going to therapy is so surprising. It's not just a mobster. He's the head mobster. The most dominant, the one who is not supposed to show weakness.
Of course, many people might react to this as "But this is stupid! Going to therapy shows a man is mature! It's like going to the doctor!"
This is where most analysis on sex and therapy stops. How do you square that circle?
A decade ago, in grad school, I was in a leadership class where we were told to be vulnerable. A student asked: "If we're vulnerable, aren't we going to be seen as weak?"
The professor replied: "There is a fine line between vulnerability and weakness. The key is to be vulnerable on things that don't challenge your leadership."
Which for a man means: on things that don't challenge your dominance.
Imagine a CEO crying on TV. Which ones of the following statements are acceptable, and which ones aren't?
My child just died.
I have cancer.
The new law is killing our company and we will fight it to death.
My strategy failed and I couldn't manage the executive team.
The first 3 are acceptable ways to show vulnerability, because they don't challenge the CEO's leadership skills. The last one does, and so it wouldn't be acceptable.
I haven't seen more than 3 or 4 episodes of the Sopranos, but I assume this edge between vulnerability and weakness would be an interesting one to explore for a mafia boss, so I wouldn't be surprised if you told me they played with that boundary through the seasons. Maybe Tony explores the differences, learns to be vulnerable without appearing weak, and when the two are conflated, he reasserts his dominance with brutality?
Sotonye: On the true evolutionary underpinnings of creative production
I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone predict the course of a story from first principles until now. You’re exactly right, that’s exactly what happens in the Sopranos. Tony slowly learns to accept the difference between admitting a problem or the need for help and being weak, but when the lines eventually blur he puts on an almost psychopathic, vicious display. This is super interesting and gets me to my next question about status and how it makes us do what we do. (...)
Tomas:
Ha! You should watch my TEDx! Stories, when well done, are engineered, so they can be reverse engineered. A mob boss going to therapy sounds like the result of a brainstorm: "How can we make a story about vulnerability? OK let's take the least vulnerable guy and force him to expose his vulnerability. What's the least vulnerable guy? The guy that has to appear the toughest? A head of the military? An MMA boxer? A head mobster! And how can he explore his vulnerability? This is usually in his internal voice. How can we make it explicit? Let's have him talk to a therapist!".
Note that with the same structure you could have an MMA champion have to develop his vulnerability to regain an emotional connection with his estranged daughter, and that would probably make a good story too.
by Sotonye, Neo Narrative | Read more:
Image: uncredited
[ed. I've conflated two articles of seeming relevance, one from Mr. Puyeo's blog Uncharted Territories (paywalled).]
