Compensation

One of the higher orders of physical standards women hold for men is height. There are countless threads in the community that address this, but I think that for the better part it’s not difficult to observe this in the ‘real world’. I should also add that this is one characteristic that is central to the Social Matching Theory in that human’s are sensitive to asymmetrics and imbalances.

女性对男性身体标准中较高的一项是身高。社区中有无数帖子讨论这一点，但我认为，在“现实世界”中，这一点不难观察到。我还应补充，这是社会匹配理论的核心特征之一，因为人类对不对称和不平衡非常敏感。

Now, before I get told in so many ways that this isn’t always the case or the “not all girls are like that” exceptions to the rule, let me start by saying that this isn’t the point of this thread. I don’t want to debate the logistics of why women prefer a taller mate or the tendency for like to attract like in this respect. No, what I’m on about is really the root of the infamous “short man’s disease.” That’s right, you know who I’m talking about; the ultimate in compensation for inferiority, the dreaded ‘short man’s disease.’ You know the guy. About 5′ 6″, pounding out the weight on the bench press. Bad ass attitude, hangs with the bigger guys (which is pretty much all of them) and throws his ego around. What a tool, right?

现在，在我被各种方式告知这并非总是如此，或者被提醒“并非所有女孩都那样”的例外情况之前，请允许我先声明，这并非本帖的主旨。我不想争论为何女性偏爱更高大的伴侣，也不想探讨在这一方面相似相吸的倾向。不，我关注的是那个臭名昭著的“矮个男病”的根源。没错，你们知道我在说谁；这是对自卑感的终极补偿，令人闻风丧胆的“矮个男病”。你肯定认识这种人。大约 5 英尺 6 英寸高，在卧推器上拼命举重。态度嚣张，与更高大的家伙们混在一起（基本上是所有人），四处炫耀他的自尊。真是个工具，对吧？

But if you think this is only limited to short men (or women), you’re making a mistake. You see, in so many ways we all compensate for deficiencies. I recently read a thread on another “non-community” forum that saw fit to start a topic asking why men lie and it got me to thinking why any of us lie, man or woman. I’ve also been fielding a lot of questions regarding issues we kind of take for granted after having discussed them to death in the manosphere; one of those being the nature of personality and one’s ability to change their own or have it changed by circumstance, or often both. I think it’s a tragic miscalculation on our part to think of personality as static, unchangeable or to question the ingenuousness of that change, but more tragic is the doubting ourselves for that change.

但如果你认为这仅限于矮个子男性（或女性），那你就错了。你看，在许多方面，我们都在弥补自身的不足。最近，我在另一个“非社区”论坛上读到一条帖子，该论坛认为有必要开启一个话题，探讨男性为何撒谎，这让我思考起我们任何人，无论男女，为何会撒谎。同时，我也收到了许多关于一些议题的提问，这些议题在男性圈子里已被反复讨论到几乎成为共识；其中之一便是性格的本质以及个体是否有能力改变自己的性格，或受环境影响而改变，又或两者兼而有之。我认为，将性格视为静止不变或质疑这种改变的真诚性，是我们的一种悲剧性误判，但更可悲的是，我们因这种改变而自我怀疑。

One simple truism that a lot of people love to use as their convenient escape clause is the JBY (just be yourself) notion. This of course is just what ones says as advice when they really don’t know what else to say. Given that though, what is it that makes a personality shift ‘genuine’. Any number of us probably know an individual who began acting differently at some point in their life. This can be the result of some kind of tragedy or trauma (think PTSD) or it can be that the individual felt a need to change their fundamental way of thinking and made the change of their own accord. Usually in these cases we think of them as posers or try-hards, trying to be something they’re not. They reflect this change in their appearance, their regular practices, their friends or the people they associate with, attitudes, behaviors etc. And this is what’s jarring for people who knew their prior personality.

一个许多人喜欢用作方便的免责条款的简单真理是“JBY（做你自己）”的概念。当然，这只是在他们真的不知道该说什么时给出的建议。然而，是什么让一个人格转变显得“真实”呢？我们中许多人可能认识某个在生命中的某个时刻开始表现得不同的人。这可能是某种悲剧或创伤（如 PTSD）的结果，或者是个体感到需要改变他们基本的思维方式，并自愿做出改变。通常在这些情况下，我们认为他们是装模作样或过分努力，试图成为他们不是的那种人。他们在外表、日常习惯、朋友或交往的人、态度、行为等方面反映出这种变化。这对那些了解他们之前性格的人来说是令人震惊的。

From the 48 Laws of Power: 来自《权力的 48 条法则》：

Law 17: Keep Others in Suspended Terror: Cultivate an Air of Unpredictability 法则 17：保持他人悬而未决的恐惧：培养一种不可预测的氛围

Humans are creatures of habit with an insatiable need to see familiarity in other people’s actions. Your predictability gives them a sense of control. Turn the tables: Be deliberately unpredictable. Behavior that seems to have no consistency or purpose will keep them off-balance, and they will wear themselves out trying to explain your moves. Taken to an extreme, this strategy can intimidate and terrorize.

人类是习惯的生物，对在他人行为中寻找熟悉感有着难以满足的需求。你的可预测性给予他们一种掌控感。反过来：刻意变得不可预测。看似缺乏一致性或目的性的行为将使他们失去平衡，他们会因试图解读你的举动而精疲力尽。极端运用此策略，甚至能产生威慑与恐吓的效果。

What makes us doubt the sincerity of a personal change is what’s at issue. If their change is something we agree with or generally think of as positive, we are less inclined to doubt the ingenuousness of this change. But when their change conflicts with our own interests, when it dramatically clashes with what we’ve come to expect of that individual, this is where we doubt their sincerity. We say “dude, stop trying to be something you’re not”, we tear it down, we fall back on JBY platitudes because it clashes with our interpretations. And in this doubt, we fish for reasons as to why a person would want that change; essentially, what are they compensating for? It may be funny to presume someone driving a monster truck down the highway is making up for a small penis, but the root of that ‘compensating’ is what makes us feel uncomfortable in our own internal compensating.

是什么让我们怀疑一个人改变的真诚性，这才是问题的关键。如果他们的改变是我们认同的，或普遍认为是积极的，我们就不太会质疑这种改变的真诚度。但当他们的改变与我们的利益相冲突，当它与我们对该个体的预期发生剧烈冲突时，我们便开始怀疑其真诚性。我们会说：“伙计，别再试图成为你不是的那种人。”我们否定它，我们回归那些陈词滥调，因为这与我们的理解相悖。在这种怀疑中，我们寻找一个人为何想要这种改变的原因；本质上，他们在弥补什么？假设某人开着巨型卡车在高速公路上行驶是为了弥补小尺寸的不足，这或许显得滑稽，但这种“弥补”的根源正是让我们在自己内心的弥补中感到不适的原因。

It’s a difficult enough task for an individual to critically assess their own personality, and even more so to effect a change in it, but the final insult is to have other’s doubt the veracity of it. What others fail to see is that at some point in the development of their own personalities, they themselves had to compensate for deficiencies, discontentments and prompts to grow and mature. This is a gigantic hurdle for most AFCs wanting to transition to being something more. On SoSuave we’ve always called that being a DJ (Don Juan), but that doesn’t encompass the entirety of maturing. I like the term positive masculinity, but the crux of all that is the ingenuousness of the actual change. Why are you changing?

对于个人而言，批判性地评估自己的性格本就是一项艰巨的任务，更遑论要对其进行改变，但最令人沮丧的是，他人竟质疑这一改变的真实性。他人往往忽视了一点：在自身性格发展的某个阶段，他们也曾不得不弥补缺陷、化解不满并响应成长的号召，以走向成熟。对于大多数渴望从“永远的失败者”（AFC）转变为更优秀存在的人来说，这是一个巨大的障碍。在 SoSuave 论坛上，我们常称之为成为“唐璜”（Don Juan），但这并不涵盖成熟的全部内涵。我倾向于使用“积极阳刚”这一术语，但这一切的核心在于实际改变的真诚性。你为何要改变？

There is a saying that AFCs are like a bunch of crabs in a barrel. As soon as one is about to climb out there are always half a dozen ready to pull him back in again. Add to this a self-doubt from societal conditionings that tell him to stay the same, not to aspire to more, he’s doing it right, and it’s amazing that any AFC becomes a DJ. This has been termed the ‘Societal Cockblock’; they tell him he’s compensating, and in a way they’re right, but for the wrong reason. PUA skills, DJ psychology, Positive Masculinity are all compensations for deficiencies. They go beyond behavior modification – that’s the easy answer. PUAs teach a set of behaviors and scripts to be aped in order to mask a deficit. These are easy pickings for the JBY apologists because they are actions that generally don’t match a person’s prior personality. They’re not “really” like that, so they’re posers, or worse, they’ve been duped by guys hawking the PUA brand of self-help tools. What they don’t see is the genuine desire to change and the reasons for it.

有句俗语说，AFC 们就像一桶螃蟹，每当有一只快要爬出去时，总会有半打准备把它拉回来。再加上社会条件作用下的自我怀疑，告诉他要保持现状，不要追求更多，他做得对，令人惊讶的是，任何 AFC 能成为 DJ。这被称为“社会阻挠”；他们告诉他这是在补偿，某种程度上他们没错，但出于错误的原因。PUA 技巧、DJ 心理、积极阳刚之气都是对缺陷的补偿。它们超越了行为修正——那是简单的答案。PUA 教导一套行为和剧本供模仿，以掩盖不足。这对 JBY 辩护者来说是容易攻击的目标，因为这些行为通常与一个人先前的个性不符。他们“不是真的”那样，所以他们是装模作样，或者更糟，被兜售 PUA 自我提升工具的家伙欺骗了。他们没看到的是真正想要改变的愿望及其原因。

When we compensate, we improvise, we fake it till we make it; but who determines when we’ve stopped faking it? We do. I read all kinds of articles doubting the realized capacity a person has to adopt ‘natural Game’ into their personality. It’s an internalization process for sure, but there has to come a point of transition where a Man’s default response IS his Game response. That’s who he IS now. 当我们补偿时，我们即兴发挥，我们假装直到成功；但谁来决定我们何时不再假装？我们自己。我阅读了各种质疑一个人将“自然游戏”融入其个性的实现能力的文章。这无疑是一个内化过程，但必须有一个过渡点，即一个人的默认反应就是他的游戏反应。这就是他现在的样子。