So there’s this concept which seems to have been independently invented by poly people and the red pill, which is fascinating to me whenever it happens. In More Than Two, abundance mindset is described this way:
In the starvation model, opportunities for love seem scarce. Potential partners are thin on the ground, and finding them is difficult. Because most people you meet expect monogamy, finding poly partners is particularly difficult. Every additional requirement you have narrows the pool still more. Since relationship opportunities are so rare, you’d better seize whatever opportunity comes by and hang on with both hands—after all, who knows when another chance will come along?
The abundance model says that relationship opportunities are all around us. Sure, only a small percentage of the population might meet our criteria, but in a world of more than seven billion people, opportunities abound. Even if we exclude everyone who isn’t open to polyamory, and everyone of the “wrong” sex or orientation, and everyone who doesn’t have whatever other traits we want, we’re still left with tens of thousands of potential partners, which is surely enough to keep even the most ambitious person busy.
The redpillers describe it this way:
Abundance thinking is the root of Plate Theory [casually dating multiple people]. A lot has been written about approaching women (and really life in general) from a position of Abundance. People often make the mistake of assuming that having a wide variety of choices tends to cheapen the commodity, and to a degree this is accurate, but it also allows for a better, learned awareness of which choice amongst the pool is common and which is of higher quality.
,…but Rollo, I’m so busy that I have no choice but to ignore and postpone. They sense it and seek me out. I worry that I’ll create crazies. My weekends are jammed. At what point do we stop?
This is a the best problem you can have. You’ve successfully flipped the script; you’ve gotten to a point where it becomes instinctive and your plates actively seek out your attention. By default, you’re creating value by scarcity. At what point do you stop? How old are you? If you’re under 30 stay in the game. If you’re over 30, stay in the game, but cool things off occasionally – the only time a man should even contemplate monogamy is after experiencing abundance. If you’re inundated with women occupying your weekends, consider hooking up with a proven plate on a Thursday evening and reserve your weekends for your other pursuits.
Weirdly objectifying terminology aside (…plates?), they seem to me to be essentially describing the same thing.
Which makes sense. Abundance mindset is incredibly useful. You can take rejection easily, because you know that you can find someone else you like just as much as that person. You can relax and let flirtation just be flirtation instead of your one last desperate attempt not to be alone forever. Because asking people out is less terrifying, you do it more often. Other people don’t feel guilty for rejecting you, which means they’re a lot more comfortable around you. You seem like a confident person that lots of people want to date, which is generally attractive. In relationships, you don’t become controlling and distrustful, making your partner miserable by trying to keep them from slipping away.
There are subtle differences, however. In general, polyamorists seem to take more of a “you are a unique person who is utterly unlike any other person I could date. However, if you’re not into me, I can find another unique person who is utterly unlike any person I could date” stance. (There’s a reason we all think this song is super-romantic.) Conversely, redpillers seem to take more of a “all women are like that, no woman is special and unique, they are all basically interchangeable and easily replaced.”
The redpillers’ philosophy is quite misogynistic, and therefore I have obvious objections to it. But more than that, it doesn’t seem particularly conducive to the happiness of the person who believes it. In general, when you love someone, you love their individuality: you love the look of their hair, the way they laugh at their own puns, their passion for sex work decriminalization, their habit of spending weekends building GURPS characters for campaigns they never play. To reduce all that down to HB6 is to lose a lot.
However, a problem with the polyamorist abundance mindset is that it is really easy when you’re already sexually successful… and mind-bogglingly difficult when you aren’t. Telling a forever alone or involuntarily celibate person “rejection will be less painful, you’ll get more dates, and your relationships will be way happier if you believe that there are lots of potential partners available for you to love!” is sort of like informing a poor person about all the great investment opportunities you have available– starting as cheaply as $10,000! It’s honestly just sort of taunting them.
The solutions I’ve seen to this conundrum are “just take a leap of faith and believe it even though it doesn’t seem true!”– effective, but probably not psychologically possible for many or even most people– and “become sexually successful!”– gee, thanks, that’s so much help. I suspect that sexually unsuccessful women who are open to casual sex can acquire an abundance mindset through putting an ad on Craigslist Casual Encounters; however, this option does not work nearly as well for heterosexual men.
However, you don’t need to currently be sexually successful to adopt the viewpoint that women are basically interchangeable. And it seems to me it would have a lot of the same beneficial effects: if Interchangeable Woman #1 rejected you, that’s mildly annoying because it means you’ll need to put in more effort before you get one, but Interchangeable Woman #3554 is just as good. If Interchangeable Woman #2666 rejected you, that’s not a personal insult, it’s just a sign you need better game. So in that sense the Red Pill is doing something genuinely good by giving sexually unsuccessful men an abundance mindset they can actually reach.
Ideally, men could bootstrap themselves to sexual success by believing that women are interchangeable, then switch to the “gosh! There are so many beautiful and unique snowflakes!” abundance mindset once they were getting laid more. However, it looks like the red pill doesn’t really offer strategies to do this, and the knowledge that women aren’t actually interchangeable seems like it would make it a very difficult act of doublethink to believe they are.
