MarcosZeitola wrote: ↑March 25th, 2023, 12:50 am
I think he knows, on some level. He just knows that it's going to be hard. That it will take real effort, real struggle. So he's always dismissed any suggestion that isn't an easy quick-fix. Winston seems like an inately lazy man; any project he'll take on is always an extension of who he
already is. So all books he writes, he writes about stuff that already interests him. All podcasts he does, he discusses things that he's already somewhat knowledgeable about. No matter how many times he goes abroad, Winston never
truly leaves his comfort zone. Hence, he never grows.
In this, he isn't unique... he's like a lot of men from his generation: middle aged American men. As much as he'd like to deny it, of course, he's largely a creature of habit. And those habits are all centered around his personal comfort. So whenever someone gives him advice and things get a little too heated, a little too
real... he bails. Because he cannot handle it.
Winston desires to be normal and accepted by society, to be a part of things, to relate to people around him. He also wants to be seen as attractive, date high quality women, perhaps marry one for one final chance at love and a happily-ever-after ending to his life story. Somehow, it always eludes him, and he blames the world, blames the universe, people, culture, but never himself. He indulges in his eccentricities, his hobbies, his personal interests, and he stays forever in his comfort zone. Some of the advice given here to Winston could have truly changed his life ten years ago. In fact it still could, today. But he needs to be pushed into it. Encouraged, constantly. Perhaps even forcefully. No one has that energy, no one cares THAT much to change him, to help him. And he himself will rebel when pushed. Go into full denial mode. Start repeating the same age old platitudes and comfortable little lies he's told himself for years that make himself sleep better at night.
It's all a matter of comfort, in the end. Some men go off the beaten path and come out stronger on the other side. Other men do not. Some never do. Winston is such a man. He's gone off the beaten path, in some ways, but never truly. Never fully. Even when he writes about a foreign land, one has to remember, he talks about tourist spots. Tourist locations. He doesn't go to Taiwan and go in-land, no, he goes to big cities. In China, he's in major cities always. In the Philippines, he primarily stays in Angeles City, which is shady bar girls central and has little culture or high quality ladies, just a ton of gross elderly sexpats and seedy establishments. Everywhere he goes, he goes to places that are already rather saturated, rather commercialized, and of course he strikes out time and time again. Only to blame "the Matrix" or "robotic NPC people" or Murphy's Law.
It isn't Murphy's Law when Murphy always does the same thing, over and over again. There's no law against such a Murphy; he's just a stubborn old fool, in such a case. No invisible hand of the universe dragging him down. None of that. @Winston should ultimately realize that the definition of insanity is to do the same thing, over and over again, expecting a different result.
What you say is mostly correct,
@MarcosZeitola, in the sense that it's 100% correct right now. Yet, as we all know here on HA, we know there was a time in which
@Winston reached "peak out of comfort zone". He spent years, even a couple of winters, in Russia and the Baltics, braving solitude, scams, the doomy or glacial weather, because he believed he was doing something that truly defined him as a man, and gave him a sense of purpose.
Fast-forward a few years, and our Dear Leader went from a high-effort/low-result (the Russian girls he hit on were pretty...but how many truly satisfied him, sexually and relationship-wise? And what price did he have to pay to keep their interest high?) to the low-effort/high-result regime of Angeles City. He went from having to work hard to date a Russian blondie, with the risk that nothing would happen after that McDonald's meal, to having a small army of scantily-clad girls all over him, all giggles and cuddles (the way Filipinas bar girls do like nobody else), all for the price of a few drinks.
That's where, I believe, Winston got lazy. He traded his high-intensity dating workout for - let's admit it - the easy-peasy-est rock bottom of whoremongering. And I say it because, having lived in the Philippines for longer than him, I know how easy it is to bed a Filipina, especially one with financial needs, let alone in AC.
Of course, instead of admitting that he preferred the abundance of cheap, fresh meat of AC to the perhaps more interesting, yet infinitely more frustrating, Russian dating, he built up this narrative that AC bargirls were not at all interested in a few bucks from him, like everybody else. Instead, they were all particularly interested in him because of his unique charisma and personality, and stuff they did with him, they would have not done with anybody else. Again, one of the most common sexpat delusions around - he wasn't special even in that.
No idea what Winston is up to, now. Lately he has been frugal with data about his whereabouts and dating and mating patterns. I can imagine that he is still as impervious to good advice as he was 5 or 10 years ago. As I can myself testify being about to cross that line, a man's personality cannot change at 50.
Not pointing fingers specifically on Winston here, mate. Desire without will is an all-too-common trait of the modern man. TPTB know it and use it to their advantage. Soon enough, our desires will be solely of the type that can be fulfilled online, in front of a machine and a screen, cheaply, digitally and without involving a single decent muscle or brain cell.