The TRUE MEANING of LIFE is that HAPPINESS is subjective well-being, an INDIVIDUALLY REACTIVE STATE VARIABLE to circumstances


“The only truly happy people are children and the creative minority.” — Jean Caldwell
Thus our challenge : to forge a CREATIVE MINORITY!
It turns out that staying in high spirits is a actually hard work! But then, happy people are known to place an extremely high priority upon happiness. A less labor intensive and demanding individual disposition to happiness might conceivably operate by natural tendencies for excitation to negative emotions to deflate more quickly and excitation to positive emotions to deflate more slowly. But your mileage may vary!
Hence, it should come as little surprise that according to research, an innate mechanism of cautious defensive pessimism gradually declining with age and sagacity, the evolutionary survival adaptation prioritizing the aversion to harm over the allure of opportunity, a predisposition and greater sensitivity known as negativity bias is the tendency in the brain for negative, detrimental, unpleasant or threatening experiences and information or even brooding thoughts, is now known to more intensely and attentively form stronger lasting impression than from positive ones, all even as neurologically detectable even in the earliest stage of information processing.

A less labor intensive and demanding individual disposition to happiness might conceivably operate by natural tendencies for excitation to negative emotions to deflate more quickly and excitation to positive emotions to deflate more slowly. But your mileage may vary!: • "Fake It Till You Make it:" Soul-destroying Pipedreaming bad policy



Congratulations! You have discovered FoolQuest.com

Other websites proffer the most trivial advice or blithely over simplistic and flawed solutions that will never help you. Do not be taken in by people in a rut who really cannot be bothered to make time simply for paying attention to one another!

Alas, engagement more than merely productive means to whatever end, indeed, engagement is an intrinsic motivation, a fundamental human need. Yet everywhere one turns, there is such indifference, indeed timid contempt and malignant hostility towards engagement in very principle, as can be seen forever spawning industries of travesty bait and switch marketing exploitation via social obstacle courses of tantalizing frustration and grindingly alienated purpose defeating sublimation. Not only are there no guarantees of course, but there is no vested interest in our happiness at all. Service to the customer, student or end user is barely a distant second in priority. We are all left to our own devices in anything that really matters.

Even viable success strategies can more quickly make you miserable, much less all manner of debilitating and evasive scams. As ever, marketing often strives to confuse and inveigle the consumer in to compensation for unmet needs, via the elicitation of positive associations and mystique all seldom actually substantiated in whatever goods or services. For such is the shameless peddling of false hope, taking advantage of epidemic alienation! Hence, in flight from exactly such worldly vexation and deception, many claim solace in religion. Indeed, there are even those myriad disciplines and sophisticated techniques, ancient and arcane or bleeding edge modern, all utterly to cease caring. And others still, ever exhort a willfully positive attitude towards sheer determined drudgery as the path to success, or likewise fitting in socially at any cost, typically either ruthless Machiavellian social manipulation of all others or else just going along to get along, quiet submission to the herd, if not, actually indeed, even both all at once.

Under the dubious umbrella of Behavioral Medicine, myriad other services including social work, social skills training and various support groups, all heteronymously are ever jockeying to "provide structure" and obtain patient or client compliance and convenient docility in treatment of dissidence. There are no qualifications or professional associations for social skills training, submissive compliance being the primary social skill and single value imparted.

But the hypothetical true guru of social skills truly fit to educate the rest of us, to gently guide and protect us all from the snares and illusions of demeaning and convoluted dominance and submission, has him/herself need neither of submission nor domineering exploitation in order to become, indeed, supremely influential. In truth, even at all any genuine true seeker of social skills is compelled to quest for any less grotesquely simplistic approach to what amounts to personal practical applied Social Anthropology.

Alas, however, only precious few of us have ever actually been happy, trapped as we are in our travails amid the rat race under such typically oppressive punishment and reward systems as school or employment. -Nor, for that matter, politics and lip service to revolution or even in the travesty of leisure that is recreation.

And so, let us all pause for a moment to recognize those among us who demonstrate such adequate and indeed superlative social aptitude and natural grace, transcendent of the woes endured by the rest of us typical well meaning but inept nebbishes. For few of us can be so blessed as our most socially adroit. Indeed, many have had to rise to the challenge nevertheless. Therefore, particularly, let us acknowledge the consummate conformists, and all that they have sacrificed deep inside, simply in order to adapt and survive. We whiners and losers, who have fallen so far short of the bar that you have set, do, nevertheless, rise to salute you and your fortitude!

So, be kind to yourselves: Do not wear your hearts upon your selves like us losers do, but nonetheless, know thyselves, that the truth will set you free. And then, no longer so scorn those of us who can't or simply won't buckle down they way that you all have.

Rather, unlike derisive Popular Prick, only wish us all luck in seeking our own difficult paths.

Popular Prick, perhaps little worse than the average educator, is basically a shock-value fictional archetype or persona, an amalgam from reality, representing the simplistic howsoever workable dishonesty of a similar ideology of life priorities even beyond the workplace and throughout social life, created by a manic marketer in search of billable sycophants, and for purposes here providing such a perfect foil and veritable avatar of the world that thwarts and mocks us so! Indeed, amoral frankness always deserves reciprocation via serious and cogent rebuttal.

Popular Prick, in his egotistically bombastic sales pitch, represents himself as the life of the party and center of attention resented by the teaming masses out of envy for his brilliantly dickish social success. Who can say? But then many others point out the superficiality of the connections garnered by a popular prick, instead prizing quality over quantity, and can only dread the lonely and superficial existence of a thriving lowlife popular prick even despite all clear and tantalizing utilitarian advantage of popularity and connections garishly touted and confidently promised.

Many ridicule and moralize against the likes of the self-styled Popular Prick, often failing to consider sheer Existential disgust at the empty impoverished meaningless unfulfilled lonely alienated boredom, among even better motivations for ever balking at social success but only and specifically on the terms of any smug and self-absorbed popular prick.

Indeed, Popular Prick provides a wonderful foil for the entire Axiology of engagement of any and every kind. Popular Prick is unsophisticated, and shows little motivation of genuine curiosity even in regards to his favorite topic of Behavioral manipulation. Nor does his constant attention to the ongoing social demands of persistent Behavioral manipulation, appear to stir even his own emotions of any meaning in the deeper sense whatsoever, anymore that they can be expected to be any more fulfilling for anyone else. Indeed, there is no sign that Popular Prick experiences, values or takes pleasure in either such engagement.

It must come, then, as little surprise, how Popular Prick fails to address the Existentially repellant emptiness and loneliness of his preferred way of life. Implicitly, Popular Prick is suggesting that it is wrong or misguided to concern oneself with such intrinsic needs. And consistently with such implicit anti-intellectualism, Popular Prick does not bother himself with such trifling abstraction.

Nevertheless, when Popular Prick asserts that "being oneself" is the problem, the unbidden implications go beyond merely any behaviors by which individual character ever presents itself to others out in the world. The problem isn't merely "being oneself" in scare quotes, as ever conceivably reducible to behaviors and attachment in the illusion of self identification thereto, but actually in literally being oneself at all in even experiencing drives beyond Reductionist Materialism or the validation from others of personal Narcissistic supply and vanity. But Popular Prick is a figurative Solipsist in his cavalier indifference and sheer failure of imagination why anyone might ever be different than he himself, except in misguided attachment to behaviors of self expression. Implicitly, Popular Prick recommends Zen non-attachment. He can have it. Popular Prick, no matter how proficient and self-absorbed, remains no less an utter tool.

For in addition to the sheer boredom of endless facile primate politics, conscience rises along with one's gorge at the prospect of a life of dishonest manipulation. Were, however, Popular Prick to exhibit genuine interest by engaging intelligently and sympathetically with any such profoundly personal reservations, why, then he would be stepping jarringly out of character. Instead, Popular Prick can only dismiss the shortcomings of his own way of life by scornful hand waving. Therefore, staying well within character and true to persona, Popular Prick simply attacks ordinary human sensibility as weak, defective and unrealistic, thereby leveraging the self doubt and criticism that helps keep sensitive and intelligent people honest, in order to press home his Machiavellian point of how much better adapted he, with any possible validity, claims to be, in the ugly real world, regardless of all thinking and feeling sensibility that he therefore so scorns in such contemptuous pragmatism and Nihilistic value destruction.

And arguably, an even heavier responsibility may reside in the value of persuasive social manipulation skills in reaching out and protecting loved ones, when honesty and sensitivity are plainly ineffective. Popular Prick's sales pitch, for all of its simplistic vulgarity, may touch upon a reflective nerve of an all too common sensation of powerlessness in the human condition.

And so, behold, the ancient Zen snake oil of conduct within dharma contemporarily repackaged yet again, sallying ever forth in renewed quest of futility:
: "A king of fools, is a fool himself." — Nietzsche.

Actual content of his eBook aside, in his ongoing cavalierly hostile sales pitch, typical self-promoting Machiavellian social manipulation guru Popular Prick does not actually recommend authentic extroversion in terms of whatsoever any true, abiding and disingenuous outwardly directed interest in others, care or concern, but only in terms of specific and calculated extrinsically motivated outwardly directed behavior, with oblivious and apathetic detachment from all else in authentic and compelling intrinsically motivated human interaction the more moving, interesting, engaging and involving.: "Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket." — George Orwell

"Being "yourself” [in scare quotes] is not the solution, it’s the problem" declares Popular Prick, who defines a prick not, perish forbid, as per common usage and thereby in any sense of the requisite sheer hostility, but rather merely as someone mindful of superficial aspects of human interaction, even to exclusion of, and unsympathetic indifference towards, all most profound motivation or howsoever substantive emotional and intellectual content of human communication and interaction. For it is mastery of exactly the most shallow that Popular Prick extols as crucial to social success and therefore worthy of role modeling via the application of modern Behavioral science -or more specifically: Neuro-Linguistic Programming obsolete no longer plausible cult snake oil, because of all the concrete and tangible advantages to be gained; in a word: expedience. After all, what can be wrong with anything anyone calls shallow or even disingenuous, if only it succeeds and all pays off when emulated, right?

Indeed, it may well be best to overlook presentation style, Popular Prick's shock value obnoxious hyperbole after all just to get our attention, and focus instead upon responding to message content so frankly proffered.

To wit: It is all is easy to extol compromise as reasonable and realistic. But in the end, it's all just bait and switch. It's becomes a moot question how to do as others who have their own way, unless what they seek even much appeals to begin with to you! Having one's own way is only desirable in order thereby for wining ones own unique true heart's desire, often entirely distinct from what everybody or anyone else strives for or values. So don't be manipulated into empty sublimation! As ever, one way or another, status accrues from buying what you don't need, at expenditure beyond one's means, to impress people you can barely stand. Only the transaction varies: Buying in or selling out!

Any solutions to all manner of unhappy circumstances, ultimately involving playing an expected social role predictably won't work for people for whom playing social roles simply does not work or becomes objectionable and demeaning. For the one fine point remains regarding social strategy of any kind, is that whereas strategy to begin with may typically be motivated by whatever extrinsic and even sensibly concrete utilitarian goals as ever put forth, by contrast, intrinsic stimulus needs including social interaction, rather, are met by likewise intrinsic if not ineffable quality of experience, a profound paradigm shift from ordinary pragmatism, intrinsic needs in turn promoting entirely different and far more complicated strategic considerations.

Only values meaningfully focus visioning to put forth relevant goals and motivate growth in human flourishing.

Indeed, the pursuit of happiness often demands all manner of utilitarian sacrifice, in favor of other values such as color experience and the satisfaction of intrinsic stimulus motivation towards social interaction and the wherewithal thereto. That is the true self-realizing will to power and autonomy so blithely ignored in simplistic reduction of successful social interaction into any mere utilitarian practicality. Little can be duller and lonelier than relating to others merely as tools!

Certainly, it is all too easy to trivialize compromise of identity and integrity, exactly as Popular Prick recommends. And it is even easier, with glittering generalities, to promise the moon! In truth, however, with the sacrifice of autonomy, in exchange for our last best hope one surrenders oneself to the authoritative mercy of strangers at random, with self alienation only compounding social isolation. In the alternative, let those of us less pliant, helpless, desperate and gullible, rise and seek together for more rewarding, optimistic and dignified alternatives perhaps from the daring and effort at howsoever the less simplistic social models.

Because, as for those rare occasional few actually indeed so readily and easily manipulated, are they really such a desirable influence? Can such shallow acclaim attained thereby and therefrom, truly be called friendship?

What the likes of Popular Prick peddle is only a hermit's indifference and disinterest towards others, nothing more or less cynical than a way if life necessarily bereft of everything that would ever involve and connect human beings with nothing tangible over which to connive or get the better of one another. Consider, indeed, what a sad thing and nothing to take lightly, to regret of a beleaguered, vulnerable and foolish loved one come to harm: Was I indecisive? Perhaps I should have been more manipulative!

But rather than Machiavelli in recommendation of socially well integrated and powerfully positioned and ruthless exploitation of other individuals, perhaps a better guide is the sensibility of George Orwell, who recognized the subversive nature of true interpersonal connection under conditions howsoever and in any degree, of oppression. The requisite social dexterity must then be likewise subversive. But no one teaches anything like that.

In hoped for and less cynical alternative to the endless cynical maneuvers of a Popular Prick, there can be nothing naive in yearning for the wherewithal to achieve any better exalted and truer sense of personal security far beyond even sheer imagination and desire to begin with, of all the world's popular pricks, in reaching out, sharing the resource and empowerment of any somehow more functional circle of support and genuine abiding and autonomy supportive respect to lighten and mitigate the weight and the snares of any such untenably and fraudulently open ended sense of unrealistic ultimate responsibility and dedication implicit in the demands of the quest, even however amoral only for power and unflinching individual dharmic mastery sans trust, reliance, or honest cooperation.

So beware! Manipulation is Faustian, even in the very beguiling thought!

Indeed, Socrates famously grumbled how expedience would be the death of us all, indeed, the end to unexamined lives not worth the living, protracted and futile slow death from sheer meaningless unfulfilled lonely boredom even amid the thronging crowds, because:



Alas: social success ≠ fulfillment
: "The penalty for success is to be bored by people who used to snub you."; — Lady Nancy Astor

Purpose defeating: The alienating common sense advice on social outreach simply does not actually work, or at least it can't without the prevailing approved techniques on how to fit in socially. But together, the latter exhortations to such drearily endless discipline, for all intents and purposes typically oppressive punishment and reward systems no less than as in school or employment, likewise explicitly contradict both ancient wisdom and the latest scientific findings about living in happiness or having any fun. For while an intrinsic motive such as of the latter, is one that finds both its source and its reward in its own exercise for its own sake even life long, whatever extrinsic motivation as of situational expedience as in the former tends to be short term, ending in discouraged ennui of boredom, distress and loneliness, indeed even the suppression of whatever if any intrinsic motivation because of overjustification effect. And so, in truth, expedience is something of a red herring.

“The trouble with being in the rat race is that even if you win

….. you’re still a rat!”

— Lily Tomlin

Otherwise with all the whimsical romance of post nasal drip, the real appeal, if any whatsoever, of all such vapid meat puppetry as extolled by the likes of Popular Prick, is to the ego-syntonic hostility of sheer malignant Narcissism, insecure, desperate and voracious for validation from others, constantly. -hence the extroverted behavior from introverted drives. Lacking full adult emotional development, the Narcissist self-servingly crafts a false persona by imitating the thoughts and actions of others. Like all self-made men, he worships his creator! "The narcissist seeks to be admired for his ability to integrate and ingratiate himself without the efforts commensurate with such an undertaking." [''How to Recognize a Narcissist']

The purported expedience of a popular prick then stands exposed as mere sickly vanity masquerading as mighty Nietzschean will to power.

Hence only because the Narcissist simply lacks sufficient intrinsically motivating genuine interest, the narcissists expertise and ability generally turns out insubstantial when probed, his intellectual grasp as simplistic as his empathy is weak. Indeed, after all, Popular Prick prides himself as the expert on shallowness!

Not surprisingly, then, the core dispute is over reciprocal irrelevance, given such distinctly different motivating stimulus needs and incompatible values. The authentic true human burning issues all such cynically dogged pragmatism promulgated by the likes of Popular Prick tends so blithely to sidestep -being so simplistically ingrained with the cynicism of Nihilistic value destruction, fails to relate, missing the point entirely, all pass beyond tactical efficacy into the field of intrinsic values informing objectives to begin with. Thus, even given consummate social skills and every manipulative advantage, all such brazen empathic failure is just vulgar and even ends in real insipid stupidity. For along with the requisite sensitivity even much to care, the poor wretched malignant Narcissist so often lacks the insight and interest at all, even to imagine the many splendored, varied and frankly more human needs, drives and preferences that so differently motivate others, much less howsoever cogently advise pursuant thereto.

"I don't think I've ever run into a man that wanted to be a prick that did not already posses the necessary skills."

— mahalotm

Emphatically no, Popular Prick's tactics seem only entirely suitably motivating for his fellow malignant Narcissists, indeed, who have probably already mastered them already anyhow. Bullshit self-help hucksters are typically ignorant and indifferent to the actual needs and circumstances of others, often complex and varied.

Even assuming for the sake of argument, the efficacy of advice such as that of Popular Prick, then well may one ask: Even given the sheer triviality and stupidity, nevertheless as matter of practical expedient, why so onerous? Because of the intensely shallow and therefore lonely -even in a crowd, exhaustive time and attention required for something so painfully boring and repugnant, effectively locking out more fulfilling engagement. Not that a popular prick could relate, but then, they never can.

"Women want mediocre men, and men are working to be as mediocre as possible."

— Margaret Mead

At long last, I have been given to understand that with soul crushing effort and in abnegation and unspoken public disavowal of who I am and all that I value, I may yet hope to do better socially.

Of course, the subtext of conformist anti-intellectual peer pressure, seldom so open forth right, instead leads along a certain slippery slope: Many say, and some even believe, that the key to social integration is to eliminate all even the most trifling of idiosyncrasies of appearance and presentation simply in order never to stand out. -Even by whatever necessary means of Behavioral conditioning, to suppress all awkward mannerisms such as betray discomfort and vulnerability, Also, most especially, to conceal all talent, great and small, so as never to incur the jealous wrath of one's social betters. Indeed, to favor both in conversation and in writing, the simplicity of vernacular and forever to abandon the love of language and them big words. Never to be opinionated, negative or critical, To remain complacent and keep silent amid the sheeple, only ever bleating along in their dullardly unthreatening incessant prattle about major league sports. A small sacrifice, so we all assured. In truth, under heteronomy, it is the release from a burden.

Indeed, the sheer restrictive and trivializing irrelevancy of online dating, just for prime example, typically exacerbates human superficiality. But in truth, anything genuine has become so dreaded as dangerous and uncouth, and therefore sheer stultifying bland superficiality so prized as innocuous, as therefore to be deemed deserving of all human art and diligence. Hence, even barring the nastiest and most manipulative Machiavellian social climbing and exploitation or the notoriously ludicrous gambits of self-styled seduction community and the intimidating hyperbole of such self promoting latter day gurus as Popular Prick to overwhelm the vulnerable and insecure into buying their books, nevertheless, all the well intended pragmatism of somewhat heteronymously robotic even if purportedly reliable procedures for fitting in albeit howsoever the more submissively, and how-to's for meeting new people, The Magic of Small Talk, limp and patiently going with the flow as like unto dead fish carried along in the fetid effluent and the patience of hanging out interminably, all as exhaustively expounded quite free of charge, on the most coherent and straightforward among similar websites: succeedsocially.com explaining that poplar people dressed casually in blue jeans, patiently and quietly amusing themselves in the empty passive boredom between standardized and actively benumbing behaviorally structured opportunities for social interaction, conversant in sports and automobile engine repair (playing the guitar is a plus), do also have other interests and opinions of their own, though keeping those interests and opinions to themselves in public. But all such vigorous and enthusiastic extol of the utter meaninglessly bleak exigent utility of adherence to such standardized behaviorally structure of social expectation all entirely at the expense of relevant beneficial intrinsically motivating end user values, the very recopies for crushing alienated loneliness even in a crowd, are all well known, actually thereby, even if it works, to vastly exacerbate boredom and distress, such being the inevitable pitfalls of interminable small talk.

After all, mere shyness is not the only possible reason for boredom with just hanging out interminably, and simply condemning perceived snootiness and cynicism with humanity often only amounts to more extol of satisfice in willful positivity towards superficial, stultified, artificial, impoverished and unfulfilling interaction. The roots of relative social isolation and loneliness go well beyond whatever personal inadequacy, flaws, talents and quirks on the one hand, or the most egregious stumbling blocks such as bullying on the other. Even taking into account the necessary awkwardness of time and effort cultivating contacts into acquaintance, let alone howsoever relationship, there are greater fundamental problems confronting and even simply accepted by the most ordinary people. Indeed, complaint regarding recreation, night life, the bar scene, family, what passes for education and the wage slavery of employment, are common place pervading our milieu, and rightly so.

Even in open condemnation of the disingenuous cross-purpose of popularity, the time and project management approach taken by 'Friends: How to Make, Keep, or Leave Them', emphasizing location, schedule and the investment of personal availability, time and attention, at all removes failed common sense into relevant logistics, as for example, of the importance of similar attitudes in ongoing harmonious decision making as to shared activity, as distinct from merely common interests in the abstract, being as the latter is, of course, such a hopelessly inadequate superficial criterion of compatibility. -All of which already raises no small challenge. Not to mention how to begin with, time and project management is not concerned with resource acquisition or opportunity, but simply takes any such as at all given.

In simplistic theory of prevailing common sense, if regular social contact is not adequately provided as byproduct of whatever structured routine, canvassing and networking in order best to market oneself, remain nevertheless simple though labor intensive. Productivity in networking requires raw material, and to be a "people person" in order to maintain a steady flow of prospects through whatever available channels. Why, the very sources of prospects are so extensive, that many actually may even find them overwhelming because having too many choices often makes decisions more difficult! -or so we may be assured. One need only be be well versed in all the proven methods of obtaining prospects before choosing your best strategy in order to generate a virtually endless number of new prospects. Then one need only sally for in order to make acquaintance, and steadily make rounds to renew and reinforce said acquaintanceship.

In selling oneself, so-to-speak, much as with sales cold calling and network marketing, most accepted sources of prospects include "satisfied customers" so-to-speak, others who are pleased with their interactions with you, and who'll therefore even find themselves prone to talk positively to their friends and associates about their interactions with you. You can also consult them in prospecting for specific eligibility criteria. And prospects beget prospects for further networking. Even prospects that only advance to fairly tentative acquaintance, might still turn out helpful and resourceful for further important leads and referrals. Set and determine the conditions of qualification in a checklist of important prospect factors and characteristics. Decide when to initiate contact. If only one is perceived as being credible, trustworthy and any sort of a mensch, why then any prospect should have no qualms whatsoever about referring others. But be sure that they also readily pick up on the benefits your acquaintance has already afforded others. So: How could it possibly fail? Every way! What could possibly go wrong? Everything!

There are of course those better adapted, but to what? Indeed, Chris, the ever optimistic webmaster of succeedsocially.com, utterly fails to recognize in his recommendation of being able to amuse oneself whilst hanging out alone in bars until social opportunity finally arises, and all the restricted innocuous conversation he prescribes when it finally does, not to mention that sad counterfeit of extroversion, the exceedingly well delineated role, skills and props of the archetypal popular guy, a confession of the boring, lonely and distant and crushingly stultifying artificiality of it all, perhaps because precisely such introverted layers of defense may actually be quite comforting to someone like Chris, webmaster of succeedsocially.com, a shy man suffering as he has from such distinct social anxiety.

But as an enthusiastic procedural recommendation for just everybody else, his advise nevertheless presents great frustration that he seemingly fails even to perceive. Where is the line between selling one self and just selling out unless of course one actually buys in? The requisite doublethink of cynically willful credulity is sheer heteronomy. Indeed, as Popular Prick insists, being yourself really often can be the cause of all social difficulty.

Then again, in fairness, though pitched and appealing to whatever desires that might conceivably be fulfilled by social success, the advise Chris, webmaster of succeedsocially.com, is then presented explicitly for overcoming shyness rather than for combating loneliness most broadly. Can Chris, webmaster of succeedsocially.com, then truly then believe that shyness is the only true social obstacle confronting either the individual or the masses, or that his own personal satisfice is universal for all? For it remains, then, that all too often, our needs are simply not being met! One "size" does not fit all.

Indeed, much as it may come as a shock to the likes of Popular Prick, not everyone derives any pleasure or meaning but only phony, joyless, unhappy, boring, lonely and pointless interaction; no more than an alienated and protracted chore in which to engage any active cognitive process, indeed much as with any other extrinsically motivated punishment and reward system and no less fearful and de-enervating of real inner passion towards anything at all more interesting on one's mind. And if all the above sounds familiar, it should: For such exactly is the mentality and very paroxysm of our excruciatingly boring stultifying dullardly factory standardized educational system in preparation towards subsequent oppression and continued overjustification effect in the workplace.

Indeed, that's Why Nerds Are Unpopular. Because nerds so often have authentically meaningful time consuming genuine intrinsic interests and values of their own to share, with neither the time nor passion for being "cool". Indeed, in the very words of arch-nerd Albert Einstein: "A person starts to live when he can live outside himself."

Beyond all pretensions endemic to runaway evolution and engorged cerebrality, we are still only pack mammals after all. But does that mean all detail of information content exchange, including whatever personal depth of meaning, is all mere trifling nuance and decorative embellishment to crucial interaction on the animal gut level of emotion as salient to all exactly the same social politics, struggle, dominance and submission, just as among any other primates? -Indeed, how every expression tickles others, always reflects upon each individual and determines the persuasiveness, individual standing, position, leverage and influence! And there's the rub:

For, while to remember that we are pack mammals is all fine and good, to forget that we are sapient, means the abandonment of rational persuasion as ineffectual and futile, and hence the surrenders of any hope of seeking the truth for soundly crafting plans and cooperating in considered action, of Epistemological Methodology towards any salient agenda.

Also, the incessant demands of arbitrary social politics must inevitably come into irreconcilable conflict with the six core polemically purpos eful and authentic dramatic motivations of dialogue, because preoccupation with effectiveness of social manipulation, endless social grooming and approval seeking, together quickly become all consuming and debilitating, soon to devolve, subvert and defeat all effort at ever conveying any honest and intelligent thoughts, feelings and values, let alone planning and acting thereupon together.

But let's not be pigheaded: Not all compromise is moral compromise. Compromise is often essential, constructive and consummately skilled. But even in any seemingly sensible acknowledgment towards the exigency of compromise with an imperfect world, the advocates of such conventional and normative paradigms of learning and embracing social skills, the veritable champions of heteronomy, all quite fail to appreciate how Faustian a tradeoff they often exhort, how alienating and demoralizing for the intelligent and sensitive, any simplistic reduction of whatever human outreach to any uninspired patient systematic procedure, a meaningless unfulfilling lonely boring alienating and dullardly chore, even excluding the most abusive and destructively dishonest manipulation.

There has always been the traditional heteronymous credo of popularity as a rugged striving of committed individual responsibility, skill, effort, zeal and involvement, wherein one is owed nothing and owes everything. Hence at best, society only offers some tools to the diligently attentive and opens any field of play to the devotedly intentive, nothing more. Indeed, as far as ever making good enough for attaining togetherness, one is all quite on ones own! And after all, the directly opposite view, demanding society coddle the manipulative bullying and emotional extortion of the chronically fragile, is if anything, even worse!

All such given, then surely better a carefree well esteemed prick than a sickly self-loathing groveller, better to know the game and keep others in the dark, than to be the one left in the dark, better to play others than to ne played.

And what comes of this?

That one way or another, conditional approval substituted for true acceptance seems the most conventional social arrangement, followed in prevalence only by compensation neurosis as manifest in all manner of compulsive substitution to fill the void of the unloved.

But can this be all that there is to life?

No, it shouldn't be! For in truth, knowing how to fit in often comes at odds with the courage and acceptance of true and authentic friendship. Indeed, popularity may even be known to drain personal resources and spread one too thin for the effective cultivation of any true friendship.

"This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man."

— William Shakespeare, Hamlet

“In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But in practice, there is.”; — Yogi Berra

Of course there is far more to such an apparent wild goose chase. There must be. The incompleteness theorem surely applies. So perhaps the advice is over simplistic if not outright dishonest, taboo and even Faustian.

The problem with setting out to cultivate new relationships or even to maintain existing ones, is that, increasingly, such simply is not the game that anyone else is playing. New people interact superficially if at all. They do not bond. Attachment fails more often than not. They often don't really warm up to strangers, and often effectively lack the autonomous executive function to follow up systematically. Insiders tend to be closed off, while outsiders become depressive and withdrawn. And many people are simply overworked. Excessive obligations often tends to suck up human resources leaving desperate exhaustion and alienation in their wake. Communities disintegrate and neighbors are barely if at all acquainted. Depressive and increasingly discouraged passivity rubs off and propagates within social networks as the sheer credibly gap of community at all widens. Initiative has atrophied and learned helplessness prevails. And this significantly undermines all hopes of any effective alliance in the face of whatever of life's adversity.

And what may be missing from the social environment, is not only chance or routine repeated contact, but facilitation and positive reinforcement, in short: social inclusion. So social inclusion is necessary in order to attain social inclusion, and often conditional and inauthentic to the point of becoming an intensely boring soul crushing chore, all consuming irrelevant bait-and-switch purpose defeating of any natural individual social stimulus needs of expression and engagement, after all the true unstated and frustrated human motivation in meeting new people to begin with.

So, is there any practical alternative approach? What about actually going underground?

Clandestine HUMINT asset recruiting so vital in spycraft and espionage reality, with all the vast resource and connection of the intelligence community brought to bear, is also a favorite staple of spy fiction deep intrigues. From the first season of 'The Avengers' before the character was developed into the even somewhat fancifully iconic archetypical English gentleman, paragon of unflappable grace, demeanor, aplomb and dry wit, a more roguish and even at all more believable secret agent John Steed, with even something of the air of a charming and affable con artist, would traverse the English countryside cultivating all manner of his own specialist personal intelligence assets, maintaining existing working relationships and scouting new talent: interpersonal networking and canvassing, preliminary research culminating in the howsoever systematic initiation of direct contact with whatever target group of individuals.

This, of course, is how he would end up in long term Platonic partnerships with leather clad aristocratic lady martial artists. (No sex please, we're British!) Remember, this is 60's television.

But returning to reality, even the most personable of individuals often struggle in sheer exasperation to meet new people, forge relationships and break isolation. And all too often, social exclusion and abusive bullying and backbiting replete with all manner devious covert relational hostility easily rivaling the most labyrinthine intrigues of espionage, real or fictional, often renders all social outreach effort even the more futile and unpleasant.

And so to employ an at all parallel stock dramatic situation, what about a fugitive, untouchable pariah or spy trapped behind enemy lines, daring not to show themselves in public in order to socialize and network for whatever needed connections and resources? How can one effectively research, spot and reach out privately, to desired relationship prospects? Indeed, what can we learn from confidence tricksters and serial killers, so expertly targeting vulnerable victims and so readily connecting with enthusiastic cohorts? Or indeed from all manner furtive sexual deviants seeking one another in the bad old days of darkest intolerance and taboo? Or more prosaically, is there anything applicable for adaptation in order to ferret out the proverbial unmet friend or the place where one is needed, from the methods of corporate headhunters in pursuit of passive candidates, intelligence gathering in order to identify and then woo qualified personnel even such as who are not actively job hunting and seeking attention at that time? Alas, unlike so much else malignant nonsense, heteronomy and snake oil, the subversive notion in very thought towards strategy in attempt at bypassing a racket so obviously unworkably standardized by design, is a realm of question actually deemed indecent, indiscreet, awkward and squeamish taboo; indeed: "unspylike." (No, really!) And what experience could ever be more surreal and alienating then that?

Unhappiness results from suffering, deprivation, frustration and fear or anxiety. Causes of unhappiness and misery include wrong doing, foolishness, unthinking poor judgment, mistreatment, cruelty, abuse of power, misfortune, stress, boredom and loneliness.
And learned helplessness is passive behavior produced by exposure to unavoidable aversive events, unpleasant experiences. When anyone perceives, correctly or incorrectly, that they have no control over their life, understandably often may give up trying, thus entering deep depression.

Passivity, depression, learned helplessness, giving up and refusal to try, may all help assuage mounting anxiety at the prospect of risk, great or small. But such coping strategy is to take refuge in ever deepening depression, even to the point suicidal despair. Simply giving up typically provides some stress relief in the short term, while exacerbating excruciating despair in the long term.

In such an empty Zen futility and meaningless existence, only constant guidance provides any distraction, and any measure of freedom only leads to gnawing boredom.

Naturally, the unhappy are more easily manipulated because, readily, the unhappy individual is well motivated to seek consolation and relief from the pain thereof. -to feel better, to be consoled, to be reaffirmed, to feel whole and complete. As ever, marketing often strives to confuse and inveigle the consumer in to compensation for genuine underserved needs, via the elicitation of positive associations and mystique, seldom actually substantiated in whatever goods or services. For such is the shameless peddling of false hope!

Hence, it becomes fairly simple for actual punishment and reward systems subtext only ever signaling the same dire lack of sufficiently engaging intrinsic value and eliciting overjustification effect, thereby to demoralize and control the ways and means by which the unhappy individual seeks comfort, consolation and respite. Thence, what will become more convenient than, one way or another, to market whatever the most readily available false hope instead of whatever they are really missing, but have been discouraged? All, however, to persistent futility. For what can be the point?

Alas, many people can never even conceive of questioning whatever the prevalent common wisdom, no matter how consistently it ever fails them in practice, emphasizing a mythology detailing some or other prescribed mechanics of prospecting for connections in utter disregard of every purpose, sense or meaning motivating outreach to begin with, the incessant demands of arbitrary social politics inevitably coming into irreconcilable conflict with the six core polemically purpos eful and authentic dramatic motivations of dialogue.

In practice, often friendship grows from acquaintance in any given context, by extending the boundaries by involving the other person in other interpersonal or social contexts. Nevertheless, obviously there must be far more to it. Otherwise, loneliness would be vastly uncommon.

Whereas indeed solitary futility is actually the single core value embraced and extolled of the Zen, in the alternative, any true solution to loneliness must instead address the inextricable discontent of sheer Existential pointlessness by the exchange of attention as only possible given engagement in the reciprocal stimulus of meaningful content, expression and attention.

Because, even putting aside the most ruthlessly cynical how-to's of exploitative social climbing and frantically networking the cold and vast in actual practice and for all purposes and intents punishment and reward system of acquaintance (likewise subtext only ever signaling the same dire lack of sufficiently engaging intrinsic value and thereby eliciting overjustification effect) amid all of the failed and trivializing commonsense advice towards overcoming loneliness, suitable enough only for simple and moderate shyness or uncomplicated social anxiety, of where to hang out, flexibility, lowered expectation, making do with whatever company can be had, however empty, quiet patient perseverance in order to come off more cool, staying active however arbitrarily and likewise organizing one's schedule, who to keep in touch, how to strike up conversation, and even screwing up the courage to confide one's woes, only rarely does the sense of sheer futility and the frustrated quest for intrinsically meaningful and engaging value enter as an aspect of loneliness or frustrated motivation, alas unless in the context of the most dauntingly senseless religious proselytizing.

Alas, even where the motivating quest for meaning and value is howsoever attended to, in relation to loneliness or not, and even with the sense of crisis so well deserved, nowhere does the abstract ever seem to connect to any strategic application or action agenda. After all, practical advice is typically divorced from abstract principle as a matter of pervasive taboo.

Substantive change demands not only a healthy discontent, even however restless, but conviction that it is in what we do, the context and content thereof and how we interact that we need some point to it, and very much for it's own sake and in the doing thereof as an essential and indispensable pressing human need or core value, rather than strictly optional or auxiliary, some mere ornamental crowning touch, let alone pragmatically superfluous or actually impractical.

No true friend demands your silence and stifles your growth as a human being.

To overcome alienation, the values of intrinsic motivation must first be reclaimed from the clutches of systematic bait and switch of sublimation. Escape from alienated dependency upon social institutions requires nothing less than the wherewithal to organize and fully immersively engage and interact in meaningful pleasurable interaction, even cooperation and collaboration.

No, it is not interminably hanging out for small talk that needs or deserves to be given any sort of a chance. Indeed, really giving anyone any chance at all, requires honest attention, genuine interest and sympathy, relative true intimacy that may likely to demand relative privacy in opposition to expectations of brainless and conformist hanging out. Individual freedom and security in any broader social contexts in order to ever really give anyone any chance, will never be achieved so long as doing nothing in particular remains so consuming and exacting a pursuit. Not everyone really has the passion for that bizarre sport.

Indeed, people first of all simply need to be. Therefore, greater true civility and vastly relaxed and simplified norms must come to the defense of even however incidental casual expression of identity. Only then will average people ever finally discover personal resources to spare for cultivating real talent and passionate genuine interests.

Indeed, the inadequacy of ordinary sheer social ineptitude can scarcely be any more daunting and baffling than, to the contrary, the despair that is transmitted from highly skilled Incompetence in adept compliance with every expectation. -oppression propagating among the oppressed!

Perhaps we might imagine that in some bygone era, what once was agreeable to one's fellow human beings was simply that one shared their burden, that they might reciprocate. It still is, except that the burden now a days, rather than actually relating to one another, is the miserable compliant embrace of alienation in a milieu wherein veritably by design, no one's needs can ever be met.

Boredom is resolved only by anything interesting enough to sustain attention. While love and happiness are supplied from someone from whom to exchange needed attention and engaging stimuli, that is, anyone who adequately relate to one another. -And loneliness is the absence all thereof, empty of meaning, sheer pointless futility.

Indeed, the active psychiatrically Nihilistic engagement in loneliness even within social interaction, is boredom perpetuated under the noxious scam of boring people relying upon others likewise confused, helpless and not paying enough attention ever even to notice or care that no one is really paying attention to one another, repressed into sheer indifference beyond any sheer bother to relate.

But surely, what we all really need to share is in the fundamental exercise of freedom being nothing less than the perceptive and intelligent quest for any effective struggle to overcome alienation and loneliness, to connect in order to mount any resistance, making every reasonable effort to improve our lives, rather than endemic blithe rationalization, bogus support group ethos marshmallow-throwing and co-validation wallowing in denial and unaware incompetent accommodation thereof.

Indeed, given food, shelter, medicine and even entertainment, what else still remains more important to real progress than human connection of stimulus and attention in whatever expression and cultivation of our talents?

Because it is not enough that what passes for education and the dreary employment the end thereof, are both behaviorally structured and standardized, therefore so must be the bulk of the leisure consumption and comfort for which they are the Faustian price. Alas, for all too many, the necessary cost of recreation, typically consumer standardized, the desperate effort and struggle to recover, on ones own time and expense, from the debilitating learned helpless sheer exhaustion, fear and loathing of exactly the ever so vigorously marketed dubious practical and Existential guarantees they all swear by, namely their family lives, schooling and job careers that they lead, has become the Narcissistic superficial mimesis and introverted oblivion ofsheer cognitive, emotional and social disassociation, fake fun, the next best thing to being dead, leaving little room for true immersive passion, trust, care and involvement in any experience of anything or anyone else or much of any deeply personal value.

Instead, only joyless unfulfilling toxic fear-based co-validation and satisfice in the embrace of superficial relations and oppressive conditionality, painfully corseted and closeted even out in the open! with determined satisfice committed to the profound alienation of networking only under whatever terms and purpose defined by unstated and uncritical consensus agenda, as proverbial cogs in the metaphorical machine and entrenchment in lives not much worth the living. -Making do with standardized in terror of being left out entirely and going nowhere at all, and worse still, of rejection, hostility, exposure and real danger to oneself and ones loved ones, of worse exploitation, even harsher abuse and life threatening decline. Lastly, determined inner life satisfice, consisting of whatever lonely individual resources and coping methods, however, weird, freakish, outré and bizarre outright or however dull, boring, downright ordinary, bland and banal.

And all such culminating in the very dread of hope itself, lest the temptation to risk may somehow ever jeopardize all so hard won in meek complacency and surrender. Even the inability otherwise to relate at all! In brief, all of the crushingly heavy and somber Existential responsibilities of heteronomy.

For, to quote George Orwell:

The main motive for ''nonattachment'' is a desire to escape from the pain of living, and above all from love, which, sexual or non-sexual, is hard work.

Such phobia of meaningful involvement and engagement also goes a long way in explaining the common and vulgar preference for the distance of empty idle gossip and groupthink over the penetrating discovery of interview and investigation yielding real knowledge.

According to Tom Hodgkinson, founder of the Idler magazine: "With a very few exceptions the world of jobs is characterized by stifling boredom, grinding tedium, poverty, petty jealousies, sexual harassment, loneliness, deranged co-workers, bullying bosses, seething resentment, illness, exploitation, stress, helplessness, hellish commutes, humiliation, depression, appalling ethics, physical fatigue and mental exhaustion."

• The Oppressed Middle

• Slack On the Job

Alas, however, suffering travail does not end at work or school. Unlike the alienated and futile struggle to relax endemic to recreation and the further aggravation and desperation of prospecting and dating, any joy in leisure and dalliance for either their own sake, need also partake in idle unconcern with outcome to take care of itself. -Otherwise, yet another chore at best, if not at the very worst: an abyss of cynical strife and deep intrigue.

That precious rarity which is fulfillment via pleasurable engagement in meaningful interaction can be ever so heady and intensive. Nevertheless, unlike grinding tedium, the relaxed idleness so distained by traditional work ethic, is also no less actually of tremendous value. After all, the principle of diminishing returns frequently applies to labor; hence, all too often, the less work the more productive each hour thereof.

• How to be Lazy and successful

"The way of the idler is a chaotic one," writes Hodgkinson. "He attempts to escape from programmes, theories, formal spiritual practice, order, discipline… The idler's desire is to live with no rules, or only rules that have been invented by himself." And exactly that is a tremendous risk; sacrifice, great lonely effort, endurance and endless struggle from which the average person tends to flee. Indeed, just as Oscar Wilde said, doing nothing is hard work!

Indeed, in solitary idleness and contemplation is often the larger part of cogitation, pondering and processing culminating in planning towards productive work only at the end. The same is often true interpersonal free exchange and collaborative brainstorming, likewise to culminate only much later on in any call to action and organization such as herein.

As a matter of Professional Ethics, a doctor such as a Psychotherapist, much as an attorney or an accountant, works only for the client or patient, with no ambiguity on that score. By way of example for purposes of illustration, an inner conflicted patient in Psychotherapy may get to the root of and overcome even actually criminal compulsions. On the other hand, they may instead come to a personal realization that in their heart of hearts they simply consider the law intolerably unjust, overcome false guilt, and rededicate themselves more wholeheartedly and effectively to a life of crime. Indeed, the Professional Ethics of Psychodynamic Psychotherapy often stands accused of even depraved amorality precisely because Psychotherapy must never take sides, except in service to the patient. But when instead conformity or compliance are allowed to enter as desiderata, as indeed such are the sole treatment criteria as they are in Behavior Modification, conflict of interests is intrinsic and manifest. And the same problem looms large over any conceivable social skills remediation in any treatment, consultancy, mentorship, counseling, educational or even howsoever parenting context whatsoever, ever pressing the saliently fundamental question:

What are social skills, really?

"American society is a society in which individuals have learned to prize social skills that permit them, like actors, to assume whatever role the occasion demands and to "perform" their lives rather than just live them."

— Neil Gabler

• What is Social Intelligence?

• Multiple Intelligence

Social dexterity can be so mysterious unless acquired Inductively, by osmosis from the milieu, socialized or to be dead honest: conditioned, because of all that goes without saying, indeed even shame and taboo from very mention: The prodigious memory and facile adolescent fascination of the social butterfly, with every detail even of the most superficial and distant acquaintance, the terrified heteronymous preoccupation with social standing, taking a hint, a sufficient word to the wise. To quote Sigmund Freud: "That which is not expressed, is acted

out." And the more that gifted and assertive self expression is discouraged and repressed, even particularly as an aspect of gender roles, the more even the most cruel and seemingly arbitrary facility in the worst covert relational hostility is encouraged and valued as actually prudent and tactful. What dangerously skilled Incompetence!

So, are social skills adaptive behavior sets? Are they standardized? Are social skills predictive extrapolation from observation and background information in context of hierarchical kinship patterns? Are they howsoever informal protocols of shared creativity in problem solving? Or are social skills perhaps even something else entirely? Or is it all just more of the same dreary primate politics? Indeed how, if at all, is Social Intelligence distinct from Executive Function and Emotional Intelligence?

Are social skills the product of socialization? Socialization, after all, is the process of Behavioral Modification by which norms and expectations are not so much informed or explained but, well, to be honest, indoctrinated into the individual, in order that by means of uncomprehending behavioral motivators, extrinsic motivation, attitudes, values and taboo, are all blithely internalized. -Ever so crucial in order to function in society, so we are all assured. "It's for your own good, dear!"

Well, first of all, Social Intelligence is analytic perception, even however practiced and second nature or: intuitive, whereas Social Skill is indeed performance, and therefore behavioral. Hence, Social Intelligence even in application, is no guarantee of Social Skills, and indeed, behavioral Social Skills may be acquired or even behaviorally conditioned, even with however great difficulty, indeed, even with precious little Social Intelligence. However, whereas social skills may tend to be social context specific, fundamental social competencies as perceived by Cultural Anthropology might be seen as translatable and adaptable most broadly.

After all, Cultural Anthropologists no matter how proficient, are not just a bunch of utter tools, rather, on the contrary, Anthropology cultivates an abiding and even compassionate interest to relate to the cultural attitudes, sensibilities and sensitivities of other societies and individuals imbued with experience thereof. The high level of Social Skills of Cultural Anthropology are certainly rooted in a high level of Social Intelligence.

Perhaps among those most notably challenged in life skills of social and emotional intelligence, being individuals, even high functioning, diagnosed on the Autisms-Asperger's spectrum, are well known often to compare themselves to Anthropologists abroad in a baffling strange new land. Alas, nothing in practice seems to have emerged from that salient insight.

• Fucktarded! Autism as sheer truism?

Cognitive Behaviorism exposed.

Why are prodigious memory and facile adolescent fascination of the social butterfly, with every detail even of the most superficial and distant acquaintance, such a tremendous advantage in life?

Cultural Anthropology investigates human society as familial and hierarchical in origin, with deep historical roots in kinship, from which all social orders thereafter have been patterned and modified under the typical heteronomy of sublimated attachment. Hence fundamental social competencies as perceived by Cultural Anthropology, include the recognition of members of one's own social group in order to form direct relationships consistent with roles of relative social standing, degrees of kinship and rank, recognition of third-party social relationships and prediction of future behavior, all distinctly and uncomfortably non-egalitarian. But the fundamental social competencies as perceived by Cultural Anthropology also include such executive functioning as cooperation in problem-solving, which as a priority of its own, may even level the playing field and engage autonomy, positive disintegration and growth, challenging the entirely different aptitudes of democratic values in action, as amongst gifted peers, dissident in significant paradigm shift. -A phenomena subject to investigation qualitatively under the soft sciences and humanities in challenge to any traditional heteronymous collective POV, forward looking to human progress ever fraught with unsettling controversy undermined and suppressed by taboo. Therefore, in ugly truth, it becomes blithely normal for members of social orders to extort deference thereto and thence for Behaviorists to exhort happiness in compliance and to pathologize and dispense treatment for dissidence, under one pretext or another. -That is, unless those social orders are evolved, healthy, functional, chivalrous, rational and scientific, democratic, sensate to the individual and to other social networks, in which case Behaviorism stands mute.

The social science of Cultural Anthropology, an unapologetic qualitative soft science eschewing the poverty characteristic of Behaviorist mimesis of hard science, quests, rather, for meaning in the cultivation of sympathetic and attentive investigation into the sensibilities and values of people and cultures, which is Psychodynamic. But there are no qualifications and no professional association for social skills training, somewhat covert Behavior Modification often carried out by Linguists and school teachers. Hence it may come as little surprise that outside of Cultural Anthropology, which is to say: nowhere as concerning any practice of social skills training, is the question at hand as to the atomic nature, so to speak, of social skills, not just whatever their function or purpose, but their fundamental constituent or: monad, anywhere explicitly stated. And yet there seem to be implicit answers as premise to whatever ostensibly pertinent treatment or education. Indeed, seemingly every flavor of Philistine blithe know-it-all charlatan expert from antiquity up to the modern bleeding edge, are all invested in the enterprise of social skills training of one kind or another, except for the one specialty uninvited despite clear actually overwhelming qualification and singular temperament of actual field observation and skepticism in study of social myth ever to challenge prevailing wisdom, namely Cultural Anthropology, and despite the noted greater relevance and actual success at all, of social skills training when actually conducted within intended setting or milieu of application. -Which is to say: by any other name, veritable applied Cultural Anthropology fieldwork blithely carried out as last resort because, as studies have revealed, learning adult-pleasing behaviors and good manners, cultural transmission from the wrong culture, is of little help to Autistic Spectrum children back out on the playground at recess. Lamentably social shills trainings as on offer, so un-empathically mindless, arbitrary, rigid and inflexible Behavior Modification, adapts poorly to new settings of milieu and situations. Indeed, beyond specific acculturation, any broader general talent of social aptitude adaptable into particular milieu or social setting, that is to say, whatever desirable cultivated aptitude for such endeavors as field work in cultural anthropology, diplomacy, or just capably negotiating new environs and situations at all, is quite simply behaviorally irreducible.

Whereas, by contrast, the science, the investigatory discipline that is Cultural Anthropology, seeks for any general principles in the cultivation of abiding respect and skills of observation, flexible and adaptable to the study of and function within various new situations, setting or milieu. -exactly the areas of deficiency characterizing no only the emotional atrophy characteristic of psychosis and the autism spectrum but actually no less of the patronizing heteronomy so fervently embraced and shared by Behaviorism with what passes for education. It would seem that those who can't do, actually don't teach very well either as it turns out. Truly, it's all a case of the mind-blind leading the mind-blind! And that won't do at all.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld observed how “A true friend is the greatest of all blessings, and that which we take the least care of all to acquire.” Indeed, in the words of Samuel Johnson: “If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself alone. A man should keep his friendships in constant repair.”

Can social intelligence ever truly parallel the empathy, sympathy and kindness, of intrinsic emotional intelligence, that instead often seems so heteronymously constrictive and even hostile to individual autonomy? Behaviorism, even as all such proto-Behaviorism anciently as the Zen, has Narcissistically reduced the essence of social intelligence to its most alienated, shallow and "operant". Whereas the practice and tradition of the investigation that is social intelligence Cultural anthropology depends upon a greater sensitivity and affinity, in a nutshell: love for a people, a functional attachment. Alas that there is as yet no psychological Cultural Anthropology of the tribe of the great Cultural Anthropologists themselves, in order to glean precisely these profound secrets. Cultural Anthropology, most obviously better qualified in every way, remains mute and silent in the misguided, idiotic and damaging discourse of all the frighteningly least well motivated and equipped thereto.

Alas therefore, that the skill sets of the ongoing cultivation and maintenance of acquaintanceship even into friendship, is perhaps the most underserved, for anyone who hasn't somehow learned it all without being told. Alas, often for those who are able, it all seems so easy and straightforward, so they don't see any problem to discuss with the rest of us. And those who better understand, are often all too rightly ashamed of the neglect of their fellow human beings, and are loath to speak openly. Indeed, many who are the most diligent life long, are actually motivated by entirely understandable social anxiety, and therefore, alas, lack empathy and therefore openly despise and bully incompliant social failures.

To begin with, how, for those who do embrace the distinction, are social skills and social intelligence for whatever range of function or purpose, distinct from emotional intelligence, sensitivity and skills by which individuals perceive and relate to one another? Even robots can now be programmed to tell when a human being is paying attention to them. Emotional Intelligence makes inference from observation and background information, to extrapolate the emotions, perspective or: POV and motivations of others, even sympathetically. But again, what by distinction, is Social Intelligence? Indeed, in usage, the very term: "Emotional Quotient" seemingly blithely embraces both intelligences entirely without distinction. Yet not only are they clearly distinct, but as we shall see, so often come into conflict.

There is, of course, much buzz about the sheer rat race which is interpersonal networking. But most obvious and basic are good habits of keeping appointments, returning phone calls and answering emails. Alas, as the saying goes, it takes two to tango. Simple responsibility on one's own part, unreciprocated, and again, even simply good manners, is the least of social or interpersonal competence. The less regard others show for you, for whatever reasons, then the more remains upon your shoulders alone. In the face of the most shocking lack of regard, individual responsibility expands open ended and mysterious. The experience can be shameful, baffling and terrifying. And any structure may seem better than none. No wonder then, the pandering wishful mass appeal of simplistic solutions and panacea, when there is simply no one with your interests at heart. And when no one cares, what is the meaning of social aptitude?

It may be readily observed how good and bad people alike pursue similar basic needs, howsoever those very needs may be exalted, demonized or simply trivialized. But whereas good people are emotionally accessible and averse to manipulation and abuse, bad people are closed, emotionally inaccessible and routinely manipulative and one way or another abusive. Hence those popular pricks are frequently trusted, and better and more honest people often shunned, perhaps even in scorn of the most natural and benign of motives that others better conceal or rationalize, or even in domineering envy and resentment of their sense of initiative, autonomy and individual gifted raw talent. So, can such blatant cynicism as embodied in the above observations be embraced as fundamental, or should it merely be dismissed as over simplistic?

The answer is that this assertion is manifestly true. The only qualifier is at least any hope at all nevertheless, that not all of us are fools at the mercy of knaves or else knaves preying upon fools, and that there really is anything more at all to master in living life. But serious and sophisticated Cultural Anthropological explanatory investigation all thereof are never so ubiquitous as exhortation to Machiavellian manipulation or submissive conformism via behavioral brainwash or Inductivist "osmosis" under whatever guise and in whatever context, formal or informal. So pervasive is the heteronymous cult of socialization! As ever, in anything truly important, we are each and all abandoned to our own devices.

The most impossibly high standards of self-realized social and emotional aptitude are enfolded even since time immemorial, within the ancient notion of conduct within dharma. But, to keep the entire question down to Earth, such concerns as improved facility in the Facial Action Coding System and body language pertains to emotional intelligence rather than social intelligence. Emotional intelligence is really just empathy, the ability to perceive or interpret the feelings and perspective of others, and even to relate to others thereby. Sympathy follows as an altruistic concern thereto. But by distinction, what are social intelligence and social skills, really? Whereas emotional intelligence applies in relationship and interaction with other individuals, social intelligence and skills are judgment and aptitude pertaining howsoever to function in groups and in society at large. So, is all of that somehow a different matter, and precisely how so?

Are social skills, indeed, anything more than adaptive behavior sets, extrinsically motivated trained seal conditioned responses in pursuit of vested interest under punishment and reward systems? Again, according to meta-study, simple unsophisticated and straightforward social skills training in any one social context, followed somewhat robotically, breaks down completely in transition to the next.

Indeed, even more sophisticatedly, is the sensitivity of social intelligence really anything any more sophisticated than sheer heteronomy and skilled Incompetence? Perhaps only if and when there is more to the social situation at hand. Even the most adroit heteronomy becomes catastrophically maladaptive to the needs of any more open society. So, what are social intelligence and social skills, after positive disintegration and growth? -Social skills as suitably befitting the dignity of free individuals? This leaves spontaneity at all, if no longer merely as an artifact of conditioned automatic action, then as a Psychodynamic issue of disinhibition and authenticity.

Plainly, simple compliant social sensitivity is heteronymous. Mere conformity can be as deficient in real Social Intelligence as would be complete obliviousness. Social Intelligence is normative in that Social Intelligence compiles and evaluates expectations as are socially transmitted, shared within smaller groups or larger societies, entailing even subtleties and intricacies for social behavior mapping of the metaphorical social landscape, all for prediction of results of different options in behavior given varying expectations depending upon circumstances, situation analysis or social behavior mapping and thence, as applicable, instinctive extrapolation of one's own or another's situation, the position anyone might find themselves in, as adjunct to and beyond the broader emotional intelligence to most generally extrapolate motivation and Point of View of others at all.

Is Chivalry dead?

In the words of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: “Advice is like snow; the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper it sinks into the mind.” Such advice will be no less distinct no matter how gentle, and never slippery, obscure, evasive or snide and demanding. Therefore, tact is not tact that is simply expected, especially out of simmering resentment against all dissent. Never under estimate the danger from indignant sensitivity of often even comically over parented nuance vigilantes, being only rarified in sheer hostile superiority, such as of the Imperial Japanese exalting themselves divinely fit to oppress all others by virtue of their indisputable exquisitely refined sensibilities. Notwithstanding, however, the invasion of Manchuria must be deemed something of a discourtesy and indeed perhaps somewhat oafish. To paraphrase from an old saying, there is no one so socially inept that there is isn't some bully even more socially inept, simply because they imagine themselves so brimming with superior social grace. Alas, adept, in the final analysis, only at self-enamored bullying, and exalted or refined only in a malignant crucible of sheer overbearing mean spirit. Alas that such cowardly and volatile heteronymous social anxiety as manifest in acute perception of nuance together with poor self awareness and also sans Emotional Intelligence or empathy, renders all but the narrowest range of peer standardized micro-expression, unintelligible and threatening even for no particular reason. It is amazing how serial bullies ever so sensitive and either toadying or vengeful to the tiniest of cues, remain nevertheless so bereft of subtlety, moderation or tolerance for ambiguity, in the evaluation all that they feel and experience.

However, true social grace and Chivalrous courtesy that has nothing whatsoever to do with enforcement and preservation of local customs for the sake of peer group cohesion, is neither prosecutorial nor persecutory, and never manifest in standing resolute upon any principle of being precisely correct about manners, no matter which etiquette or sensibility applies, but rather in moderation of power and deference to vulnerability, most brilliantly achieved in the blessed élan of giving way that is gained by smoothing over petty quarrel and from artful abetting of others in saving face, especially in whatever venial infractions or misstep. Indeed, speaking of subtlety and subtext, far from precision and rectitude, in any meaningful values such as of proportion, moderation, farness and mercy of democratic civility, tolerance for ambiguity remains requisite, especially such as in redeeming social hypocrisy that with such wry honesty and caution, passes over all manner of Empirically observed broadly and chronically unmet ostensible social expectations with the proverbial grain of salt. True social grace is like ballroom dancing, the opportunity for consummate achievement in helping even ones most awkward dance partners feel happy, clever and graceful nevertheless, not by harming or demeaning them. For such is the art of Menschlichkeit.

In truth, is there really anything by half so simplistic, clumsy and socially inept as the standardized indoctrination and coercion that nowadays passes for social skills training? Indeed, why does social skills training ever in any part consists in simply teaching or conditioning acceptable behavior? How is that skill? Wouldn't the skill as such manifest, rather, in the tolerant dexterity in recognition of expectations, even such as must vary between circumstances of culture and situation? Why isn't a truer social skills training the province of any howsoever better qualified applied Cultural Anthropology? After all, given indeed that emotional intelligence is empathy, and that sympathy follows as an altruistic concern thereto thereafter, then what is there that exists relative to Social Intelligence, at all as sympathy to empathy?

In other words, Axiologically in our heart of hearts:

Why should thinking caring individuals

value and admire toadying Social Intelligence?

The answer and best most fervent recommendation in life, from Psychodynamics as to why anyone cares, remains nothing more or less than attachment (yes, the very bane of existence, according to the Zen!), an aspect of relationship and reciprocity, not only of individuals to one another or anything else, but of the individual to society, social environment and situation, even sublimation. But much as with relationships and attachment between individuals, relationship between the individual and society, social environment or situation, is variably defined by the entire gamut of applicable motivation and character from formative experience, the entire gamut from nurture and autonomy supportive respect, to fear based heteronomy or alienation if not outrage and maladaptation, violent crime or else sheer frigid indifference indeed exactly as extolled of the Zen. Therefore, mere skill alone and as such, is hardly considered, Psychodynamically.

Although the interpersonal Psychodynamics of Transactional Analysis does, indeed, cultivate skill in the Antithesis: a somewhat subversive dexterity for breaking out of a dysfunctional rut in relationship and interaction. Again, democracy in principle is only a definition for a healthy relationship between the individual and any society that values, fosters and respects autonomy.

Aptitude with nuanced nonverbal communication, is sometimes named: covert social skill. But isn't such, rather, a function of emotional intelligence? Perhaps that depend upon application thereof, to what extent whatever subtext transacted be genuine, individual and autonomous, or social and disingenuously heteronymous. Other functional subtleties are the proverbial grain of salt, context, moderation, proportion and even the saving grace of social hypocrisy mitigating otherwise barbaric custom, all typically lacking in comically over parented heteronomy.

Indeed, another answer or reason to care, is suggested by Cultural Anthropology and the social sciences, that in the process of Empirical field research into the acquisition of social sills among other aspects of character, study all the myriad factors of variable social or societal expectations and process, in the appeal even to meaningful values in and of any culture, and also how they inform individual affect, motivation and Point of View, all that ever may inspire empathy and sympathy theretowards, highlighting for any culture it's collective face, whereas ideology only reveals unsympathetic collective neurosis.

What then is all this talk of social skills, except sheer Sophistry depicting by inference and implication all manner of unreasonable, vague and open ended oppressive demands and expectations as seemingly somehow reasonable and hence capitulation by any means and at whatever cost merely realistic rather than desperately cynical? Exactly what sort of social skills?

Isn't the rampantly crypto-totalitarian systems encroachment that is the inculcation of social skills actually just Moralistic and oppressively burdensome upon membership in society? With every mounting probortunity that faces our species in our times, frankly haven't we got far more urgent and important considerations to impose upon one another than such endlessly debilitating and silly collective validation? Should we not better value the skills by which the society better cam include and serve the individual, and foster best personal contribution? What more is actually required or desirable for social cohesion than civility, Chivalrous social grace and democratic sensibility with due process ass necessary?

Unfortunately, no thanks to Behaviorism "providing structure" in order to obtain compliance via Behavioral Modification, such intangibles unrecognized by Behaviorism much as they are scorned of the Zen, including empathy at all, let alone towards cultural values, make for precious little part of how socialization is generally conceived of. Worse, far from making ready to meaningfully redeem social skills training co-opted and trivialized by the Behaviorists, on the contrary, whatever social skills, though deemed requisite for organization and fieldwork, are not formerly addressed as such in the curriculum of Cultural Anthropology and the Social Sciences. -An omission which has drawn criticism.

Rather, socialization is generally appealed to, mealy mouthed, as a convenient situational osmosis of indoctrination from the social environment in our educational systems, as for example, the point of social skills such as quiet self control, being presented as in how we then can learn what we are being taught, indeed not to put too fine a point: to compliantly endure coercion into boredom, rather than, perish the very thought! of howsoever facilitation in learning whatever interests the individual, intrinsically motivating requisite focus thereby. Alas, power, as from authority of sheer numerical advantage, confers impunity for whatever levels of sheer collective bullying, peer pressure and the dropping hints instead of accountability to transparency, explanation and open controversy.

Under those circumstances, the greatest impairment to vaunted social skills, is simply dissidence and autonomy. Hence all the greater appeal of Transactional Analysis striving towards some subversive conduct within dharma. Alas, any of the same old same old, is readily marketed to subversive mystique, nowadays.

After all, whosever nevertheless as the ardent disciple heteronymously embraces whatever conventional wisdom of social success, tried and true, with every enthusiasm of learning, will therefore tend only to stop and dismiss the complaints of misfits and malcontents, or the fulfillment of varying social needs of entirely different personalities, all as entirely quite superfluous, insufferable, boring and needlessly complicated. No doubt, how much simpler things would be if we all thought alike!

On the other hand, however, for example, given as how it has been clearly and consistently observed even in early development, how gifted children mysteriously no longer require any guidance of socialization, whenever simply afforded opportunity of interaction amongst their true peers, other gifted children, that rather does beg the question of exactly who is truly inflicted with needless complication by whom!