Defining the Term “Game”

I’m taking issue with Jack’s latest post on Game.

If you insist that “Game” can only mean the Pick-up Artist (PUA) model, then you and I have nothing to discuss. Stay away from my blog.

Let’s start by defining the term “Game.” In the context of discussing manhood and the so-called red-pill men’s movement, it refers to a body of lore. Within this body of lore, there is a psychological model of human behavior. As with all models in psychology, it should not be viewed as factually true or false. Instead, it is a working model regarding certain elements of human behavior. If you ask me, there is a lot of Game lore that only appears to be true; it seems to work in Western cultural settings. The lore is cluttered with false assumptions, one of which is that the Western cultural frame of reference is somehow the human default. As with any model, Game can be used or abused, to manipulate or to actually bless people, and a lot of variations in between those two poles. Game is the lore of how men and women respond in terms of their sexual identity, and how well they perceive the reality of how other humans respond.

A significant portion of Game lore does conform to Scripture. The model includes some basic truth about human nature, and it is between you and God how you sift those things out. There is a sense in which a lot Game lore can be called Biblical Law, in that it helps you deal with people who lack a spiritual awareness. You will need less Game awareness with spiritual people. You need less Biblical Law, as well. Spirituality puts everything in a higher realm of awareness, but Law is how we get there. Some people enter your life and refuse to come near that higher realm, so you deal with them based on Law. It’s what they demand. Game provides a bottom line, a default alternative that helps you show people compassion and mercy by pointing out how their fallen nature works. That’s what the Law Covenants are supposed to do — they point out a functional path through certain contexts. It can help you steer a path in situations where you must assume the worst of the people around you. That is still the grace of God, but it’s not the full grace He offers. In some cases, that’s the best you can do.

If you strip away Game lore and seek to expose the basic underlying principles of human nature, it may be pretty hard to put into words. That’s how Biblical Law works; it’s heart knowledge, not head knowledge. Dealing with persons is not a science, per se, but an art that requires some elements of the scientific approach. You can get some of it via a Law level of understanding, and that’s a lot better than ignoring revelation altogether. It’s a start on the path back to Eden.

A part of the Game lore is recognizing that different folks have varying abilities to understand the Game model; that is part of the lore itself. You can easily sort the humans you encounter based on their displayed awareness of Game. It’s a model that is not restricted to sexual marketplace behavior, but the wider behavior of humans at large. An Alpha Male is an Alpha all the time, and will manifest characteristic behavior patterns regardless of the context. Obviously real humans are likely to be a mixture of things, and these categories are likely to be fuzzy in actual practice. Still, the underlying model of human behavior holds rather consistently in terms of what you can predict about most people you encounter, if you get a chance to assess what you are seeing.

Someone who really understands Game can play the Alpha role when the context demands it. You learn to go there when it speaks the mercy of God into a particular situation. You may have a high facility with Game instinctively, or you can learn it by studying, just as you might with Biblical Law. Some of us have an instinct for revelation that is stronger than it is for others. But everyone can find peace with God if they want it. By the same token, you can learn to understand Game well enough to claim divine blessings. A lot of what Jack wrote brings us back to the same old question of whether you think it’s Law versus Grace, of if you tend to see it as the same truth addressed to different levels of understanding.

But if you can start to see through Game lore and begin to grasp the underlying model of human behavior, and then you can also carve off the fat that comes only from Western culture, you begin to see that, Moses’ Law for example, agrees with the characteristic weaknesses Game attributes to women by how the various provisions of Law seek to restrain the implications of those weaknesses. Only in Western culture are women trained to believe such an overwhelming set of lies about their own feminine nature. They are told what they want, and most of it is nonsense. The Bible offers social constraints on women that take into account the things they actually do want.

There are whole range of particulars we can discuss regarding men and women already saddled with a spouse who is not spiritual. By the same token, we may also be stuck with a spouse who lacks good Game awareness; it’s frankly rare to find someone who does have that clarity. Game can teach you not to take yourself too seriously. It can teach an Alpha to avoid his own weaknesses, as well as all the other categories, for both male and female. It can help you navigate a merciful path of blessings in a life where you are hitched in the yoke with someone who pulls in the wrong direction. Game and Law both can give you a sense of when to make hard decisions that you must make because you are already in a bad place. It can also help you do better the next time. If you absorb enough of it early on, you can make good choices in the first place.

I’m not that brilliant, but God granted me a certain amount of instinct and I married exceptionally well. I never really needed Game to make my marriage work, but I most certainly got a lot better doing marriage once I did learn Game. That’s because it fits right into the lore of Biblical Law.