Approach Anxiety in the Ancient Times

Many PUAs, most notably Mystery and David DeAngelo, are big fans of evolutionary psychology. Evolutionary psychology posits that the human brain is a product of several different competing systems, which have evolved to help pass the genes of humans. Unfortunately, many of those systems are now woefully antiquated.

For example, the authors of the book Mean Genes surmise that approach anxiety resulted from a time when the Ancient Ancestoral Environment (AAE) was filled with a small group of people who all knew each other. Men attempting to approach a strange woman would be viewed with suspicion, and most likely killed.

So we begin this reading from Tariq Ali:

Gerald Martin’s new biography of Gabriel García Márquez reveals that Chronicle of a Death Foretold was based on the murder of the novelist’s friend Cayetano Gentile in Sucre in 1951. He had seduced, deflowered and abandoned Margarita Chica Salas. On her wedding day Margarita’s husband was told that she was no longer a virgin. The bride was sent back to her family home. Her brothers then found Gentile and chopped his body into pieces.

Tariq Ali, in the London Review of Books.

This is a pretty straightforward example of that principle. Tariq Ali, however, goes on to list the repercussions for women, which are far longer and more extensive. In almost all ancient codes of conduct be it Greek, Jewish, Roman, Zoroastrian, or Arabic, the punishment for a female cheating or having sex unwed was far greater. And thus this gives us what PUAs term "Last Minute Resistance".

The article by Tariq Ali is a harrowing, but very real reminder of why our jobs can sometimes be so difficult.