The Pet 宠物

One requirement I have of most of the men (and women) I do consults with is that they read The 48 Laws of Power (The Art of Seduction is in the class syllabus as well). In the introduction author Robert Greene runs down the ethical implications of understanding and employing the various laws. If you look at the synopsis of the laws I linked you can get an idea of how uncomfortable some of these laws will naturally make people feel. Many of these laws understandably rub the uneducated the wrong way because for the better part of our lives we’ve been taught to emulate socially acceptable mannerisms and adopt a mindset of cooperation above self interest.

我对我所咨询的大多数男性（以及女性）有一个要求，那就是他们必须阅读《权力的 48 条法则》（《诱惑的艺术》也在课程大纲中）。在引言中，作者罗伯特·格林讨论了理解和运用各种法则的伦理影响。如果你看我链接的法则概要，你可以了解其中一些法则会让人感到不适。毫不奇怪，许多这些法则会让不了解它们的人感到反感，因为在大部分人生中，我们一直被教导要模仿社会可接受的礼仪，并 adopting 一种合作高于自身利益的心态。

Most people are conditioned to think that deliberate use of power is inherently manipulative, self-serving and sometimes evil. In context this may or may not be true, but in so demonizing even the desire to understand power, not only do we inhibit a better critical understanding of power, but we also make the uneducated more vulnerable to the use of power against them. The 49th Law being: Never educate others of the principles of power, which is itself a form of using power. Never talk about Fight Club.

大多数人习惯于认为，刻意使用权力本质上是操纵性的、自私的，有时甚至是邪恶的。在这种情况下，这可能对，也可能不对，但当我们如此妖魔化甚至理解权力的欲望时，我们不仅抑制了对权力的更好批判性理解，还使得未受教育的人更容易受到权力对他们的利用。《第 49 条法则》说的是：永远不要教育他人关于权力的原则，这本身就是一种使用权力的形式。永远不要谈论搏击俱乐部。

I bring this up because, just as with the Laws of Power, there will be articles of Game, or foundations of intergender communication – complete with all of the underlying motivators – that Men (and women) will be uncomfortable accepting or employing to the point that it challenges some deep rooted emotional or ego investments. Let me be the first to establish that discomfort is part of understanding; truth is supposed to make you uncomfortable in order to inspire you to action.

我提出这一点是因为，就像《权力法则》一样，会有关于游戏的文章，或者性别间交流的基础——包括所有潜在的动机——让男人（和女人）不愿接受或使用，以至于挑战了他们深层次的情感或自我投入。让我首先明确一点，不适感是理解的一部分；真相应该让你感到不适，以激励你采取行动。

I should also add here that even though you may not be comfortable in exercising a particular tactic or don’t feel confident in approaching an interpersonal situation in some way, it is still vital that you do understand the concepts and methodologies behind why those laws, principles, techniques, attitudes, etc. do work. You may have personal reasons for not wanting to involve yourself in some particular aspect of Game, but it’s imperative that you fully acknowledge the mechanics behind that aspect before you decide it’s not something you can employ. Declining to use a particular Law or aspect of Game doesn’t make you immune to the consequences of it, nor does it invalidate that aspect when others use it for their own benefit, and potentially to your own detriment.

我还要在这里补充一点，即使你可能对使用某种策略感到不适，或者对以某种方式处理人际关系没有信心，但你仍然必须理解这些法则、原则、技巧、态度等背后概念和方法。你可能会因为个人原因不想涉及游戏的某些特定方面，但在你决定不使用它之前，必须充分了解该方面的机制。拒绝使用特定的法则或游戏的某些方面并不会使你免受其后果的影响，也不会在其他人为了自己的利益使用它时使其失效，甚至可能对你不利。

Half the Battle 一半的战斗

The primary (though not exclusive) focus of this blog has been devoted to the critical analysis of the mechanics behind intergender dynamics, Game-practice, Game-theory, social and evolutionary psychology just to name a few. I can understand the want for practical applications of this field of study, and while in my line of work I have done my own ‘field testing’ with the majority of what I explore here, I have neither the time, opportunity or resources to develop practices beyond what I offer here. At least not to the degree of which the majority of my readers are able – and that’s the good news.

这个博客的主要（但不是唯一）焦点一直致力于分析性别间互动的机制、游戏实践、游戏理论、社会和进化心理学等领域。我能理解人们希望将这一研究领域应用于实践，虽然在我的工作中，我已经对自己在这里探讨的大部分内容进行了“实地测试”，但我没有足够的时间、机会或资源来开发超出此处提供的实践方法。至少无法达到我的大多数读者能够做到的程度——而这正是好消息所在。

“This is brilliant stuff Rollo, but how do I use this to make my life better with the next girl I sarge, etc.?” This is a common desire from my readership, and the best I can offer is Knowing is Half the Battle. One size doesn’t fit all for everyone in Game or intergender relations. Anyone hawking a book giving you an instruction manual on how to have a great marriage or how to pick up chicks is still limited by their own individual experience. In other words, they’re not you.

“这是非常精彩的内容，罗洛，但我该如何利用这些来让我在下一个追求的女孩身上，以及在生活中过得更好呢？” 这是我读者中常见的一个愿望，而我所能提供的最好建议就是知己知彼，百战不殆。在把妹或男女关系中，一种方法并不适合所有人。任何兜售一本书，给你提供如何拥有美满婚姻或如何泡妞的说明书的人，仍然受限于他们个人的经验。换句话说，他们不是你。

It’s for exactly this reason I spend more time and critical thought on the foundations and functions of gender dynamism than pick up artistry. When I get associated with the “manipulative machiavellian Game gurus” it only serves to highlight an ignorance and lack of any depth of understanding what I focus on here. Game is psychology, sociology, economics, biomechanics, evolution and politics. Game is far broader than simple tricks and techniques. And it’s exactly the latent purpose of these applications (PUArtistry) and the mechanics behind their workings that threatens the ego-investments of those who’s feminized interests would rather see them marginalized and passed off as folly, or usefully ridiculed to shame the curious for fear that the underpinnings might be exposed.

正是由于这个原因，我把更多的时间和批判性思考放在性别动态的基础和功能上，而不是搭讪技巧。当我被与“ manipulative machiavellian Game gurus”（ manipulative machiavellian 游戏大师）联系在一起时，这只会凸显出对我在这里关注的内容缺乏任何深层次理解的无知。游戏涉及心理学、社会学、经济学、生物力学、进化和政治。游戏的范围远不止是一些简单的技巧和方法。而这些应用（PUA 技巧）的潜在目的及其运作机制，恰恰威胁到了那些女性化利益群体的人的自我投资，他们宁愿看到这些被边缘化，当作荒唐之事一笑而过，或者利用嘲笑来羞辱那些好奇的人，生怕其背后的基础被揭露出来。

Head in the Sand 埋头沙中

Sweetening the poison doesn’t make it any less deadly.

加糖的毒药并不会让它变得不致命。

I can remember a time in my mid-20s working as a stage tech for a casino cabaret show. The magic act I set up and struck every night involved a Bengal tiger and a black panther. Both of them were professionally handled by trainers, but even though they seemed the most docile of animals I knew they had the potential to seriously fuck me up under the wrong set of circumstances. The trainers would keep them at distance from the rest of the cast and crew, only myself and one other tech were able to get close since we were the ones wheeling them out in special cages at their particular point in the show. One trainer told me, “the moment you think of them as pets is the moment they’ll go feral on you.” They would play with these wild animals, and they seemed to have a special connection (almost like a pet), but when you watched them eat, you knew what they were capable of. 我记得在我 25 岁左右的时候，我在一家赌场歌舞表演中担任舞台技术员。我每天晚上安装和撤下的魔术表演中有一只孟加拉虎和一只黑豹。虽然它们都由训练师专业地操控，但即使它们看起来是最温顺的动物，我知道在错误的情况下，它们可能会对我造成严重的伤害。训练师会让它们与其他演员和工作人员保持距离，只有我和另一名技术员能够靠近，因为我们要在表演的特定环节用特殊的笼子把它们推出来。一位训练师告诉我：“当你把它们当作宠物的那一刻，就是它们会变得野性难驯的时刻。”他们和这些野生动物玩耍，似乎与它们有一种特殊的联系（几乎像宠物一样），但当你看到它们进食时，你就知道它们 capable of.

I learned a valuable lesson from this when one night I was wheeling the panther out to the curtain. She was in what was basically a reinforced acrylic aquarium on casters with a velvet cloth draped over it. A few minutes before my cue I’d thought the drape was falling to one side and lifted it to even it out. It was then that I was face to face with this “pet” in nothing but faint stage lights and about 4 inches of transparent acrylic between us. She looked at me with those yellow-green eyes and gave me a very low, almost muted growl and flashed just enough of her teeth to let me know this was not a “pet”.

我从一次经历中学到了一个宝贵的教训。那天晚上，我正把黑豹推到幕布旁。她被放在一个带轮子的加固亚克力水族箱里，上面盖着一块天鹅绒布。在出场提示前的几分钟，我觉得布有些歪，就掀起来想把它弄平。就在那时，在微弱的舞台灯光下，我和这个“宠物”面对面，中间只有大约 4 英寸的透明亚克力隔开。她用那双黄绿色的眼睛看着我，发出非常低沉、几乎压抑的咆哮，还稍稍露出牙齿，让我明白这绝不是一只“宠物”。

It’s a mistake (and sometimes a fatal one) to ignore what you know is just under the surface. It’s comforting to believe that you’ve got a special connection, and while the conditions are right, you’ll preserve a relationship based on mutual trust and shared affinity. The flaw is in believing that trust, and kinship is unconditional; that the underlying feral motivators are subdued to the point of being inconsequential. It may be that you do have a special bond that goes beyond just the physical, but that relationship is still founded on physical rules that constantly test and influence that individual.

忽视你知道就在表面之下的东西是一个错误（有时甚至是致命的错误）。相信你有一种特殊的联系是令人欣慰的，而在条件合适的情况下，你会维持一种基于相互信任和共同亲和力的关系。问题在于相信这种信任和亲情是无条件的；认为潜在的原始动机已经被压制到无关紧要的地步。可能你的确有一种超越物质层面的特殊纽带，但这种关系仍然建立在不断测试和影响个体的物质规则之上。

You know better, but the desire for that connection is so strong that you marginalize the natural impulses into feel-good rationalizations. Every divorced man I know has uttered some variation of “I never thought she was capable of this.” In their comfort they wondered how they dropped the ball, especially after having played by the rules for so long. Some knew about Hypergamy, others made it their “pet”, only their beautiful panther went feral.

你知道得更清楚，但那种对连接的渴望是如此强烈，以至于你把自然的冲动边缘化成了感觉良好的合理化借口。我认识的每个离婚男人都说过类似“我从来没想到她能做出这种事”的话。在他们感到舒适时，他们想知道自己是如何失误的，尤其是在遵守规则这么长时间之后。有些人知道高嫁理论，其他人则把它当作“宠物”，只是他们美丽的黑豹变得野性难驯。

Play My Game 玩我的游戏

It is a far healthier approach to accept the laws of power, the laws of Game, Hypergamy, etc. and fashion a life around an understanding of them than to convince oneself that they are an exception to them.

接受权力法则、游戏法则、女性慕强择偶法则等，并围绕对这些法则的理解来塑造生活，是一种更为健康的方式，而不是说服自己自己是这些法则的例外。

There are those who seek power by changing the game – by lowering the basketball hoops in order to better shoot a basket – but in ‘leveling the playing field’ they only succeed in changing the nature of the competition to better suit their individual abilities, neither improving the game nor themselves. The temporary change of rules only serves their inadequacies in that game.

有些人通过改变游戏来寻求权力——通过降低篮球框以便更好地投篮——但在“平衡竞争环境”的过程中，他们只是成功地改变了竞争的本质，以更好地适应他们个人的能力，既没有提升比赛，也没有提升自己。规则的暂时改变只是为了掩盖他们在游戏中的不足。

Then there are those who accept the game for what it is, they understand it and they master it (or at least attempt to do so). They understand the need for adversity and the benefits it gives them when they reach the next level of mastering the game – not only in technique, but from the confidence this genuinely and verifiably confers.

有些人接受游戏的本质，他们理解游戏并努力掌握它（或至少尝试去掌握）。他们明白逆境存在的必要性，以及在达到游戏掌握的新高度时逆境带给他们的好处——不仅是在技术上，更是从这种真正的、可验证的自信中获得。

Don’t wish things were easier, wish you were better.

不要希望事情变得更容易，希望自己变得更强大。

It’s the aberration who seeks to legitimize her cheating at the game as the new way the game should be played. Shoot the arrow, paint the target around it, and you’ll always get a bullseye.

这是企图将她游戏作弊行为合法化作为游戏新玩法的人。先射箭，再在箭周围画靶子，这样你每次都能命中 bullseye。