Unlike the woman at a party who drooled all over Wesley Yang when she'd read something he'd written, I fail to see how this writing conveys tortured genius. The main gist seems to be that Asian men--or Yang in particular--have noticed that bros get all the jobs, promotions, and girls, and would like to have a piece of the bro-pie. (It seems that 'bro' is the new parlance for 'douchebag,' which is a phenomenon previously discussed here.) This is the unmistakable bro MO:
“It’s like, we’re being pitted against each other while there are kids out there in the Midwest who can do way less work and be in a garage band or something—and if they’re decently intelligent and work decently hard in school …”Bros don't study and they don't work hard; they just down cheap beer, pop their collars, exercise their firm handshake, and make partner at JP Morgan. Bros are generally white, I guess, but maybe there are black bros too. I'm not an expert on the racial breakdown of bro-dom. Apparently though, there aren't many Asian bros, and Yang is angry about that. Yang would also like to be a bro.
Only, why? Why would anyone actively want to be a bro? Doesn't recognizing one's superiority to morons discourage one from wanting be a moron? Worse, why would anyone who is not a complete life failure see PUA-dom as a road to self-improvement? If you graduate at the top of your class, and go to Stanford or Harvard, and have a serious job, do you not feel even the slightest twinge of shame participating in this exercise:
Before each student crosses the floor of that bare white cubicle in midtown, Tran asks him a question. “What is good in life?” Tran shouts.In addition to being absurd, how is this strategy--becoming a bro via becoming a PUA--going to help the ostensible victims of this article, young Asian men who want to be writers and poets but apparently scowl too much? Will standing with their legs at the right angle and seducing busty white chicks "get Jefferson Mao or Daniel Chu the respect and success they crave"? If they want to be recognized for their writing, that would seem to be kind of distracting. But where is the tragedy in their lives? They just graduated from college. They're 22. They have plenty of time to be successful, and I don't think having pumped the iron of math in grade school or scowled too much in college is really what's going to make or break them in poetry or fiction.
The student then replies, in the loudest, most emphatic voice he can muster: “To crush my enemies, see them driven before me, and to hear the lamentation of their women—in my bed!”
Then we are in anti-Amy Chua land, which is by now a really dull place. Yang is upset that Asian parents apparently fail to inculcate the requisite sense of entitlement and smugness that all white people get from their parents. Instead of playing Scrabble with their kids, Asian parents send them to pump the iron of math. (Yes, I do plan to use this phrase as often as possible in everyday conversation now.) I've already endorsed pumping the iron of math as an educational strategy, so there is no need to re-hash that. But the problem is that "Chua’s Chinese education had gotten her through an elite schooling, but it left her unprepared for the real world." Well, so it goes with all educations and upbringings. Perhaps you have heard of the Bildungsroman? It is not a Chinese word. Adulthood is a problem in the West--it screws up everyone, including the people from abroad. The Scrabble-playing parents are wringing their hands just as hard fearing that their kids will become oxycontin addicts. You can push too hard, and your children risk becoming yessir-ing robots, or you can not push at all, and your kids risk ending up on the dole. Or, vice versa, and robot child will rebel and get many piercings and a boyfriend named Lizard and never speak to you again while lazypants child will succeed in spite of you and disdain you so much that she will never speak to you again. Given these options, Amy Chua's life trajectory doesn't seem so bad.
Unfortunately, 'Tiger Daughter' is coming to Harvard next year, where I predict she will be intensely hated by all her classmates, but others predict that she will throw expensive parties with live animals and become extremely popular.
14 comments:
i went to her blog and looked at her pictures, and i can't imagine anyone that attractive being hated at harvard. i definitely agree with the expensive/popular crowd.
“To crush my enemies, see them driven before me, and to hear the lamentation of their women—in my bed!”
*blink blink*
You know, I've always preferred sexual partners (both real and fantasy) who were happy, nay eager, to be so.
Not so much with the lamenting.
You're creating a straw man if you characterise him as advocating that Asian males become bros. Obviously there are plenty of white males who fit his standards of "success" who aren't bros. These Asians are learning bro-like behaviour without necessarily giving up their academic success. I agree that the parts about Asian writers are irrelevant, but if one reads him as discussing how and if Asians can combine academic success with more streetwise skills, it's more reasonable.
Instead of calling it "sense of entitlement and smugness", what about confidence or self-esteem? The statistics for Asians in high level positions are pretty dismal. Isn't this a legitimate worry? It seems that your criticism is that it's only a minor problem, but if people attach a high utility to those positions, are their preferences necessarily... wrong?
It's not obvious to me that acquiring more of the skills that whites have means giving up whatever other advantages Asians have now. There's a legitimate question here about whether Asians can have the best of both worlds. (And it seems that perhaps growing up in an Asian family and then getting therapy of some sort for self-confidence might help.) You seem to think that there's a necessary trade-off, but that needs to be argued for.
Alex: I suppose. I just assumed people would hate her life story enough to overcome her hotness.
Sigivald: The PUA philosophy is complicated, but they think that their conquests are eager...to be conquered.
Ponder Stibbons: Where do you see the lack of self-esteem as the problem in the article? The descriptions of successful people are primarily descriptions of people who don't deserve their success. The guy from Stuyvesant/Chicago describes his classmates as basically mediocre people who "succeeded" because they didn't try too hard (although who knows what it means to succeed when you're 18 or 22), the leadership training is about how white people get ahead by being arrogant and Asians need to learn how to be arrogant too, and the PUA stuff is all about manipulation--success without dessert.
This is like the argument some big blogger made a couple of years ago about women in business--that the reason they weren't as well-represented as men is that they're too "relational" and not practiced enough in the ways of the total asshole, and they need to get moving on that. But why is that the answer? If you recognize that the dominant culture of some industry is basically total douchebaggieness, why conclude that everyone else must assimilate to what you admit is a pretty debased standard? Why not attack the culture instead?
I'm not sure if there is general evidence that Asians have lower self-esteem or self-confidence than whites, but that would be odd. In Asia, for one thing, that would seem to be impossible--two billion people can't all be sad and mopey, can they?
I don't know if there is a necessary trade-off. I think that the fears of "Asian parenting" (at least in the US) are pretty absurd, and Asian kids will neither crush white people nor themselves turn into robots. Since I'm not convinced that Asian parenting leads to diminished creativity or initiative any more than other immigrant parenting does, I'm not sure what the trade-off might be between Asian upbringing and American culture.
MSI: That is true - but that still doesn't fit in with his quote about their lamentations, in bed.
I think he just thought it sounded "cool" and didn't bother to analyse what it actually said...
"Why would anyone actively want to be a bro?"
If it were possible, I would lend you a pair of testicles for the weekend so you could understand. The chief advantage of being a bro is that you tend to have simultaneously a larger and tighter social network than the non-bro, and therefore you meet attractive women with much greater frequency. I speak as a non-bro who regularly aches to wear a backwards Sox hat and an Aaron Rodgers' jersey.
I feel sorry for Asian men. Women value ethnicity over income in a mate, and white women, for some reason, are particularly prejudiced against Asian men. One study found that an Asian man would have to earn $247,000 more than a white man in order for a white woman to prefer him. If that sounds overly refined, there are a number of studies in different circumstances that have the same upshot.
If you live in America, most of the hot women around you will be white. How depressing it must be, knowing that almost all are prejudiced against you, no matter how many polynomials you can bench.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2010/10/female-race-consciousness-as-prudence/
But if you want to meet attractive women with great frequency while traveling in a male pack, all you're really saying is that you want to be a bro because you are a bro. An answer, perhaps, but a limited one.
Also, if you're really making decisions based on the statistics of sexual conquest, shouldn't you consider that, while there may be more white women in America, their hotness density may be lower than that of Asian women? White women are, on average, fatter, poorer, frizzier, and probably have worse skin than Asian women. Thus, the best investment of your pick-up resources might actually be in Asian women, thereby potentially giving polynomial benchers an advantage (unless Asian women also spurn them in favor of white bros)?
I don't have a male pack, but I would value it mostly for its utility in meeting women. Generally speaking, girls find you suspicious if you don't have male friends around. I once ran into some old female friends from my high school at a rock show, and they thought it was the creepiest thing ever that I went to the show alone.
Counterintuitively, building male friendships is ultimately a more effective hook-up strategy than perfecting one's PUA "game." Having lots of male friends will bring attractive women into your orbit, in contexts in which the women will feel comfortable enough to give you a shot.
Unfortunately, I'm terrible at building male friendships.
Actually, there is a lot of psychological literature comparing self-esteem levels in Asians and European Americans. One may object to the methodology used to measure these levels, but a search on Google Scholar will show that there are significantly more studies showing a difference in favour of European Americans than vice versa. What seems to be the consensus is that East Asians tend to score lower on self-esteem surveys, but there is much debate about whether this reflects genuine differences in self-esteem, or just differences in modesty. This special issue is a good way to get into the literature.
And of course not all Asians are sad and mopey. It's a statistical thing. So Asians might just be more sad and mopey than Americans, on average. And being sad and mopey isn't perfectly correlated with having low self-esteem. It's possible to have low self-esteem and not be depressed. In any case, most if not all East Asian societies have higher suicide rates than the US. This may not be due to self-esteem, but it does show that it isn't absurd to suggest that East Asians might systematically differ from Americans on some important psychologically relevant variable.
Mrs S-I: I think it possible that your statistical analysis may have been too much for Charles. Perhaps he doesn't care for math-pumping.
When I was young enough to chase hot women (before I caught one), I found that being part of a circle of women was better than hanging with guys. Since they were friends, they did fix me up with dates (although this particular arrangement wouldn't have worked for someone they thought was either a PUA or a douchebag).
This approach also worked better for PUA's that I knew that managed to hide their DB-ness. The guys that were at greatest risk for STD's spent a lot of time dancing - not only were the women they were around remarkably fit and flexible, but the female to male ratio was very high, and even higher when you included only straight people. These DB's had to pretend enough interest to learn some dance moves, but the bar was low enough that they didn't actually have to be good at it.
And, finally, Charles, it is creepy to go to a concert by yourself.
Yes, my poor brain can't handle a concept like "density."
Asian men have to compete with white men for Asian women, and they have very little chance with white women. Cold comfort, MSI.
Ponder: I wouldn't deny the possibility of systematic cultural difference, but I would question whether, in this case, the disparity is one that ought to be eliminated in the direction of Americans, or the popular perception of Americans? The articles you linked mostly treat "self-enhancement bias" as a group of neutral attributes, but the description is pretty questionable: they're social strategies for artificially inflating one's status and reputation, or in short, they're attributes of douchebags. (Also, self-enhancement in these articles doesn't seem to be the same thing as self-esteem, although one of the articles uses it as a proxy.) Why should anyone be encouraged to be self-aggrandizing and self-deluding? Because this is the way to "win" in American corporate culture? Or because it universally leads to greater well-being?
Hardlyb: I don't think it's creepy to go to a concert alone, but it's creepy to go to a concert alone to pick up women.
Charles: I don't think I can offer much useful advice for your dilemma beyond disputing the value of bro-dom as a route to successful marriage. The world of clubs and man-packs is foreign to me. I don't know any intelligent women who've married bros, but if that's not an important attribute for you, then maybe man-packs and clubs are the way to go.
Also, one more question for Ponder Stibbons: These articles also suggest that there is a difference between private self-evaluation and public self-enhancement--that is, what you really think of yourself and how you project yourself to others. East Asians have both more realistic self-images (or less "unrealistic optimism") and less inflated public projections of themselves than North Americans. That is, they know what they are but often don't project it. For North Americans, self-delusion converges with self-enhancement, and they don't know what they are and pretend to be what they're not.
Relative cultural norms and their specific justifications aside, isn't having an accurate view of oneself the most important of these options? Once that's been attained, persistent self-deprecation in public is probably no better than persistent self-enhancement, and strategic deployment of one and the other is probably the best. But in order to achieve that, one must make a Machiavellian distinction between what one really is and what one appears to be, and this requires a well-developed capacity for self-control. Presumably anyone could develop self-restraint, but those who already make a distinction between what they really are and which image of themselves they choose to project are better-positioned to exercise self-control than people whose private and public self is the same. The case for being "American" in this respect seems extremely weak.
Mrs S-I: I thought that "to pick up women" was implicit in my response, but apparently not.
Charles: Density was not the key concept in her remark - it was conditional probability.
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