Years ago, back in my aimless college years, I worked with a couple of professors on a “strategic threat assessment” for the US government.
Basically, our job was to use our knowledge of geopolitics to look at areas the US was at risk internationally over the next 20 years. This involved the usual checks of critical infrastructure against islamic terrorists, but front and center on our minds were how other major powers (ruskies etc) could jeopardize US security.
One area I focused a lot on for the team was strategic resources; in particular “rare earth metals.”
In this research I “discovered” that the US had essentially zero production of Rare Earth metals — a bunch of weird sounding elements at the bottom of the periodic table that are required in advanced computer chips (for things like guided missiles).
This was a problem, especially since 95% of the world’s production came from a single country: CHINA.
Not exactly the country you want to control a primary resource your military runs on.
Worse yet, they restricted exports so other countries had a pretty hard time stockpiling them.
Big security threat, as you might imagine.
(Of course, my report like all others of this nature was almost certainly never read, and likely filed away to oblivion by some low level bureaucrat. This is a major reason I learned never to take think tanks seriously — no one who makes decisions does)
But that actually isn’t what I came to talk about today. Rather, it’s about a girl I worked with there.
This girl was the daughter of another professor at the school. He was nasty and argumentative — I hated him — and yet somehow as if possible, she was worse.
To paint the picture: this girl was very very smart but looked like a fat rat and made you want to tear off your ears whenever she talked. She was extremely intellectually arrogant and deliberately unlikable (almost certainly a compensation).
She didn’t pay any lip service to femininity, there wasn’t even a vestige of it. Her wardrobe consisted of three t-shirts — all of a cheap nerdy theme.
Spending time around her, I got to know these t-shirts very well… so much so that a decade later I still strangely remember one of them.
It said, captioned among a cartoonish drawing, “Schrodinger’s cat is dead, Schrodinger’s cat is not dead.”
For those who don’t know, this is a quantum mechanics thought experiment by the brilliant physicist, Erwin Schrodinger. In it he suggested that if a cat placed were placed in a box with poison (in a precarious position of being emptied), it could be simultaneously alive and dead — it’s fate dependent on if the observer looked at it.
(I’m not going to explain the details of the experiment, but I recommend googling it.)
Anyway, it reminds me a lot of shit tests with women.
For instance, a lot of times shit tests consist of accusations — and often unfair ones.
Maybe you’ve been getting things done, and she insinuates you’re lazy.
Maybe you took the initiative during a crisis, and she called you panicky.
Is she wrong?
Perhaps you feel that way, but it depends.
Once the accusation is made, it exists, like schrodinger’s cat, in a superimposed state.
How you respond determines the truth of what you are to everybody.
Always remember this before you respond to anybody.
How you are defined is based on perception, not objective truth. If you are not paying attention to your subcommunication you’re sunk.
Which is why you NEVER get defensive with a woman.
If she questions your manhood, and you react as if your manhood is threatened, then your manhood IS threatened.
Agree and amplify, ignore. Or if it continues, leave.
Respect is the backbone of your interaction. And sometimes the only way to get a girl to respect you is to act like you respect yourself.
Be very careful about responding to things in a way that proves you are the thing you are trying to disprove.
Like the cat is neither “alive nor dead” prior to observation, you are neither attractive nor unattractive at the time of the shit test.
It’s how you respond that yields your verdict.
And if you want to improve that response?
Apply to work with me here: www.patstedman.com/application
– Pat
FYI – I only publish old emails on the website. To join the list and get the new, daily-ish ones, go here: www.patstedman.com/optin
